āCH requires people to contribute the content. Letās see if todayās newbies are willing and able to provide the content that the site was known forā
Very well said.
The only contributions I see are from the CH Staff, a few remaining long time members & people promoting themselves.
I donāt know about that. I donāt find much to get interested in there these days, but I just counted 55 or so posts in the last 21 hours (Sunday, 2/21) using the āLatestā page. How can you tell who is āstaffā?
Rather than look at Latest, I personally find it more useful to look at NEW Topics. After all, one of the things that CH used to have in proverbial spades was lots of new topics every day across a wide variety of boards . . .
Just looked at the (moribund) WINE Board. According to CH ā at least on my screen ā the top 10 topics, those most recently replied to, were started (and replied) as follows:
3 days ago (10 minutes ago)
3 days (20 hours)
8 YEARS (1 day)
17 days (4 days)
6 MONTHS (6 days)
15 days (11 days)
21 days (16 days)
17 days (16 days)
20 days (no replies)
1 month (23 days)
In other words, no brand new posts within the past 24 hours. It used to be far more active than that.
SAN FRANCISCO? Used to be a highly active board. Well, itās more active than the Wine board, but in similar fashion . . .
19 hours (11 hours)
2 days (15 hours)
1 day (19 hours)
19 hours (no replies)
2 YEARS (20 hours, but only 6 replies total)
10 days (1 day)
11 months (1 day)
13 days (2 days)
1 YEAR (2 days, but only 4 replies total)
2 days (no replies)
Thatās two new posts in 24 hours.
In the FWIW mode, six of those topic were started by Melanie Wong; she was also the most recent to respond for six of those topics. Seems like a one-woman show . . .
Hereās a useful way to make an apples-to-apples comparison. A poster created identical threads on Chowhound and Hungry Onion. Theyāve both been up since 2/6. The Chowhound thread has 89 replies. The Hungry Onion thread has 44 replies.
I must say while the montreal chowhound board is more established I prefer the formatting options on hungryonions (the posts are better looking).
I donāt have a clear favorite, I have people I like that are still on chowhound even though they messed up their site and I donāt have any beef with the moderators but they do erase the links I try to do to here (I havenāt translated my āMontreal food and giftsā to chowhound yet and I sometimes try to link inquiring minds here with no success).
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
255
I wonder if Captcrunchfinds notices any difference in the quality of the responses/discussion?
But it clearly shows that Chowhound has more activity than Hungry Onion, and that that activity is not limited to āthe CH Staff, a few remaining long time members & people promoting themselves.ā Eh, whatever. Disgruntled former Chowhound members are determined to remain disgruntled, obviously.
Overall, its pretty similar qualitatively. You have to remember there are people I know well on the chowhound montreal board so that tends to generate more discussions.
There seem to be more europeans and even some italians giving feedback on chowhound, which is really interesting to me (the thread is a lot about exploring what seem to be authentic āitalianā cuisine too (although with italy I guess I should say exploring a regional variant). Chowhound is an older board so thatās not surprising.
Some people asked me to contribute to threads already started on chowhound on Hazan but like I said Iām not a big fan of omni threads and I tend to be a bit verbose so Iād rather thread bomb my own threads than intrude elsewhere.
In terms of attitude the sample size is not big enough for me to draw conclusion. Iām not going to paint a whole community with the same brush just because lisa had an aggressive post.
As for sunshine842ās comments I would suggest to be careful about looking for questions when you have answers. I know some of you guys are a bit bitter about chowhound and I donāt know from all boards but the MTL chowhound board is still alive and kicking and we rarely get moderators to visit. Iām sorry if that isnāt what you want to hear. I try to participate here and there at the same rate (I will often post the same content on both places) and I have no preference but I canāt present a formatted version of reality just because it fits a useful narrative.
Scuse me, but I didnāt say a word about my disgruntlement. Iām not ā I still log onto Chowhound, as Iām one of the dwindling few who havenāt been booted unceremoniously to the kerb.
The math speaks for itself.
there are 222 users on HungryOnion at the time of this posting.
Letās get a wild hair and assume that 50% of those were inactive. Okay, 5.1 million. Letās assume another 50% of the active users stormed off in a huff, leaving 2.55 million users still stumbling along. Letās say 25% of the active users got booted ā thatās still 1 million unique users.
All these numbers are silly, of course ā but the bottom line is that thereās a Queen-Mary-sized boatload of users on CH and a comparative lifeboat with room to spare over hereā¦and they still only outpaced our discussion by 44 posts.
I donāt hate Chowhound. I find the new format to be nearly unusable, and most of the new post to be mindless drivel that isnāt anything I care to respond to. Saying that Iām disgruntled would be giving my feeling about the site far more credit than they deserve. I donāt give a shit, if you really want the truth.
Its hard to say definitively who is posting but right after the new format came out site activity dropped sharply. Then all the sudden there was a sharp increase in old popular threads being dusted off and brought back to life. Many long time Hounds picked up on it and have commented about it.
At the same time this was happening, a whole bunch of new members showed up and dominated the posting. I found this flood of new posters curious as well as their ability to flawlessly navigate a site that overnight became a complex maze to the rest of us.
I donāt hate Chowhound. I find the new format to be nearly unusable, and most of the new post to be mindless drivel that isnāt anything I care to respond to. Saying that Iām disgruntled would be giving my feeling about the site far more credit than they deserve. I donāt give a shit, if you really want the truth <<<
Wow, I read that no less than 6 times and really canāt even add an adjective . NICE!!!
Well, itās truly not something very worthy of debate but all that is pretty circumstantial stuff. FWIW, I never found the new site anything close to āa complex mazeā. For me the issues were the change away from geographic community, serious performance problems on my older iPhone, arrogant and condescending attitude about the change, and heavy-handed moderation especially regarding the user backlash. Plenty to chew on, but I quickly found a way to post and to realize that a very significant percentage of the posters I valued had disappeared.
Not bad considering the age and long term exposure of CH (vs) a brand new site, āHOā. In addition, those that care and make a site great are here, not there.
Yes, thereās no doubt that Chowhound traffic has dropped steeply on certain boards. Two of the ones I visit frequently, Home Cooking and Manhattan, are still fairly active, although less so than before the re-vamp, probably by about 30%. On the up side, threads about tipping have become as rare as unicorns. Canāt say Iām sad about that.