The diminishing SF food forum scene?

Regional Dining Discussions SF Bay Area, NorCal, Tahoe
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Many interesting posts & reasons here. I do think the “macro trends” of more sites & mobile hurt.

One factor: with food being “a thing” now, and a really big thing, there are many people posting and opining who are simply looking for one or two tasty spots, or don’t know much. In general, when a community becomes large, it becomes contentious and less interesting. Small, targeted communities become — a community. You can’t be in a community with 1M people.

When CH did its board reorg ( re-split of boards, before the redesign ) they could have created more granular boards. MUCH more granular. In my patch, they could have created east bay, SF, peninsula, south bay; they could create “high end” vs “hole in the wall” … all sorts of things. Then I could ignore the $300++ dining notes ( except when I was feeling “that way” ).

But they didn’t. They stuck with a large single BA board, which has trouble maintaining cohesion.

On a personal note, the moderation at CH might have been a large part of its success, but one day it just upset me so much that I don’t go back on a regular basis. The issue was a restaurant in Port Costa. Not “The Warehouse”, but a place across the street, forget the name. I had a really delightful dinner there, and ( openly ) mentioned that my friends who dragged me there were “friends of the house” and we got better service than usual, perhaps, although all items were on-menu. I spent over an hour writing, maybe even two, because I really liked the place, and it was rejected, because I stated I was “known”.

I pointed out that this policy simply causes people to leave out when they are “known”, and there were some folks in the south bay who I am certain have stakes in certain restaurants and talk them up a bit, but never mention it. The CH policy requires you to leave out biases you know about and may have.

I believe, ethically, as a writer and (unprofessional) reviewer, your requirement is to state the bias as you know it. I am clearly not a garden variety sockpuppet shill account, I’ve been writing for years on these boards, and a forum should allow writing when you are “known” in some way as long as you state what happened — the mitigating factors.

Imagine M Bauer’s reviews if he actually stated how “known” he was at different restaurants !

That discussion with the mods really frosted me. Because I’m right. I think CH may have relaxed or changed its policy on these things, but not after bringing my blood to a boil.

The personality issue — yeah, it is/was a problem, and I’ve probably been my share of the problem. I’ve learned to keep my trap shut more often, and I’m sure many here and there appreciate that. Stick to the food, Brian.

To recap:

  • I wasn’t learning much at CH ( same small number of restaurants discussed )
  • I felt beset by the moderators
  • Personality clashes weren’t fun
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42

I too have noticed, that much to my dismay, there seem to be a lot of posts about very high-end places. I have other, more compelling, vices than expensive restaurants. Those other vices take me all around the Bay Area and elsewhere. I’m looking for a good food, good value place to eat where my other vices take me. I wasn’t seeing a lot of that on CH.

chocolatetartguy_in_berkeley

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A lot of Berkeley people

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How maddening!!! I don’t have time or the inclination to investigate the actual policy, if it is even available for the time of your ‘incident’, but that’s just plain ridiculous. My guess is that someone concluded you had to have more of a connection than you stated, probably because of the depth of your comments. If you’re quoting yourself correctly, YOU weren’t “known”… your friends were.

45

CH mods said that the policy was ANY case where a person is “known” or with people who are “known” as friends of the restaurant would be rejected. They created some sympathy saying they understood I personally was not, but CH needs to appear unbiased, and thus they apply the policy equally — didn’t want to be in the business of guessing. This just seems like an insane policy because it simply causes people to lie. They even suggested that I should do that and resubmit. That means to me that other people know about this policy, and lie. My respect for CH dropped massively.

On a related note, I would like HO to have a policy where if you are known or friends of the owner or anything like that you are honor-bound to mention that in any discussion.

46

Unfortunately, there is always a huge gray area. Needless to say, an owner of a business cannot promote his (her) business, whereas a person with no connection to the business can post a review.

However, there is a huge gray area. What if the owner promoting a rare certain dish which he also happen to have at his restaurant? The owner may genuinely like this dish which triggered him to have it on his menu. Is that stepping across the line? I remember Boardsmith Dave gave people advises on how to pick the best cutting boards. He never told people to get his cutting boards, but all his advises point to the kind of cutting boards he offers. Is this acceptable?

On the flip side, just because someone has a conflict of interest, it does not mean the advises are factually wrong. A evolutionary biologist may have an interest in the field of evolution theory, but it does not mean his idea is factually wrong. In fact, he is probably more correct than most people.

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47

It actually makes sense that being with “known” guests could be construed as creating an unusual experience that would not represent ‘normal’ service at a restaurant, so a ‘review’ by that friend of ‘knowns’ is probably not pure as the driven snow. But… as much as I understand that, it just doesn’t seem like it fits with the spirit of adventuresome chowishness I though CH was fostering, especially if the ‘relationship’ is disclosed. I can’t recall exactly, but I think I once posted about a winery whose owner I became friends with in the trade. I disclosed than and never had any blowback. I guess you were just unlucky.

48

True, but that is unlikely to be the reason why it was retracted or deleted. I think bbulkow is just unlucky for some reasons.

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That" Queen of the Board" never met a cuisine she couldn’t Google.

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50

Thanks, Souperman. :smiley:

51

“That” Queen of the Board" never met a cuisine she couldn’t Google."

Very nice. My name on this board is in homage to the alpha poster on CH who always has to have the last word. After all, Page and Brin are ALWAYS right, yes??

Hilarious that he may be totally wrong, but will come back in 0.0235 seconds with the GOOGLE final judgment. He is truly the Google Gourmet, not to be confused with the Frugal Gourment…

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ok I understand some of us have people we don’t get along with. What about people who we like- are there posters whom you like that you would love to see here?

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I like you.

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Well thank you, I am flattered. But I am here already. :smile:

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I like petek.

56

I was more thinking about the SF bay area good posters who disappeared over the years.

There is already one:
https://www.hungryonion.org/faq
Disclose Conflict of interest

When you write about a product, please disclose any conflict of interest, e.g. if you are related to the owners of a newly opened restaurant that you are writing about, please disclose it. If you are a professional baker, you are encouraged to offer your expertise in baking, but please don’t direct readers to your baking product or bakery. Advertisement of products and services should not be integrated into posts.

57

I used to participate frequently on the board and stopped before I left town for many reasons, some of which were specific to my circumstances. I also saw frequent posters whose opinions I respected stop posting.

I think the biggest reason for its decline was actually technology–that CBS completely missed the boat with mobile. The type of young people who are moving to SF for tech and tech-adjacent jobs would find Chowhound hopelessly out of date in terms of usability. There will always be attrition in every online community–people move, lose interest, have a change in financial circumstances–and to curb a loss of the community itself, there needs to be a constant flow of new people. It seemed to me that in recent years, there was very little “fresh blood.” It made sense that a 25-year-old moving to SF would expected better search and better mobile features, among other considerations. I’m not a big user of Yelp or instagram, but I would bet there’s plenty of wheat mixed in with the chaff, and some of the users are people who would have used Chowhound if they found it in 2005.

Personally, I found a great sense of community in Chowhound when I began using it. Sure, I went to awkward Chowdowns–but hey, they were initial face-to-face meetings with internet people and can be like a bad blind date if the chemistry’s wrong. I also met SF users who were incredibly enthusiastic, kind and generous. One of the witnesses at my wedding is someone I met at a Chowdown ten years ago.

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58

This has been an interesting thread to read - even from almost 3,000 miles away. I’d be interested to see if any of your thoughts are changed by the fact that the “food forum scene” seems to be diminishing everywhere. @BostonEater noted earlier that:

It’s an issue not just with the San Fran board, but NYC, Boston, etc. Large and expensive cities are not attracting chefs. The costs to startup restaurants is prohibitive. That’s why places like Austin, Cleveland, Madison are becoming more popular.

I’ll submit that when it comes to forum-style discussions, we’re seeing a decline even in the minor-league cities and large towns. I’m not sure it has much to do with economic factors, restaurants are still opening everywhere - there’s just a thinning in the communities exchanging ideas and experiences. Yelp seems to suffer less from this phenomenon, probably because it is not truly a forum with the benefit of dialectic give-and-take, but rather a place for self-indulgent puffing and proselytizing - a lone candidate on the debate stage, unsubjected to rebuttal or fact-checks.

The personality issues are likewise interesting. In a sense, they seem like they would have to become unavoidable with any site that exists for a substantial period of time. Sooner or later, personality elements will find a point of conflict. Moreover, humility is always susceptible to momentary abandonment.

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I think you are talking about Yelp.

60

One of the biggest issues with mobile is you can’t write long multi-page posts easily. I always only use CH ( or HO ! ) from a laptop simply because I can’t write fast or accurately. I have a bluetooth keyboard for my phone but I rarely carry it, I have tried a lot of soft keyboard technology before settling on Swype, I have a large-format phone ( 5.7" screen ), and it’s just not pleasant.

Funny that everyone said the computer would kill writing — I never figured that out — computers allowed me to write, given my terrible spelling.

but
Writing != mobile