WFD meta discussion

Cooking Discussions Cooking, Cookbooks, Ingredients
38

I’ve been on this board for about three years but I’m still a relative newcomer. I was never a part of Chowhound or some of the other forums, but I have read enough of people’s reminisces to get an idea of what they were like. That being said, if I didn’t feel welcome, I would not be here this long. The same goes for the many other newcomers we get who become regular posters. The quality of this community is an excellent one as are the majority of contributions.

In regards to this topic, I am for leaving things as they are. The title itself is What’s For Dinner? not What are You Cooking? You can argue that it is in the cooking board and should therefore be only about cooking, but that would deny us a chance to see a large portion of restaurant-related posts, which would then be relegated to regional boards which admittedly I am probably not going to seek out. Such an amalgamation or centralization is why I enjoy WFD: because I get to see a little bit of everything. The reason why I slowed down posting in the very regionalized “What’s Cooking New Jersey” (a thread I created, by the way) is because I wanted to interact with people all over the world. Cross-posting, for special meals, exists for this very reason.

Some people eat out every night. Some get takeout. Some cook every night. Some do all of the above.

Some have fine china, some use paper plates,

Some have a fancy camera, some rely on their smartphones, some take no pictures at all.

Some dine at expensive restaurants or use the finest of ingredients. Some are on a budget.

Thus is life. I want to see that $100 seafood tower and $200 bottle of wine right after a Shake-and-Bake pork chop and beer that probably cost $10 to assemble. What the entire forum is, if anything, is a microcosm of the world of food.

We come here for inspiration. We come here to be tantalized. Pictures add to that but are not required. However, I guarantee if the prevalence of cameras via phones or whatnot was around at the beginning of the “old” forums, there would be thousands of pictures on those too. I like seeing people share pictures from their kitchen-- it is insight into their life and very intimate at that. No one would do that if they did not feel comfortable within this community. I also enjoy the “life discussions” that accompany some of the food pictures since it adds to the experience and perhaps what went into someone’s dinner choice.

The bottom line is this: as a historian, I would deem this forum “worthy of preservation due to cultural significance” if it was an actual object. I think sometimes we lose sight when we nitpick, and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way.

I could say more, but you get the idea.

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39

A little long for a mission statement, but a perfect distillation of why we come here and stay here.
:slight_smile:

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40

IMHO, we are all time challenged to some extent. I can pretty easily parse which are restaurant dishes and which are home-brew. Skimming through one dinner thread allows me to see the best of both our experiences. In order to keep the regional forums vibrant, a separate nod or even double post is not out of line. But prohibiting restaurant comments/photos from the WFD thread will definitely limit my exposure to them. I doubt I would additionally read a specific restaurant what-we-ate thread.

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41

Next time please share with us what you really think, don’t hold back.

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42

Of course, only the current participants can answer that. But, presumably, the answer would be “yes”, otherwise they would have stopped posting.

By way of comparision, I’m a regular contributor to a particular Tripadvisor forum. Right at the beginning of the pandemic, someone created an off-topic “chat” thread which Tripadvisor has allowed to run. It’s nearing the end of life stage. A number of longstanding contributors have stopped posting which, of ocurse, makes it less interesting, so others then drop out. We are currently discussing how and when we should end it. But the residue of posters obviously gain benefit from its continuation in its present form so are suggesting a very long or open-ended termination date.

Which I suppose brings me back to my earlier point that if the current WFD contributors are content with restaurant reviews and the moderating team are also content, surely that is an end to the discussion. Let them get on with it.

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43

I see a lot of thoughts upthread. Inclusivity. I agree. Sharing personal experiences and connection. I agree. It also appears we have different ideas about what WFD is as a thread. So I agree that it’s hard to say something is rightfully or wrongfully categorized there, when we as a group don’t know what it’s meant to hold as a category. That said, I’m not persuaded by the arguments that if a post won’t get as many eyeballs somewhere, you should move it. If I want to post about stoves and cookware doesn’t get eyeballs, should I instead post about stoves in what are you drinking? And if we want to be inclusive to such an extent that WFD captures what we cook, what we buy prepurchased at the grocery, and what we eat out, then why do we subdivide other things? Why have a regional board on CA and one on NJ and one on TX? Why not have a United States board? Isn’t that more inclusive? More eyeballs? More connection?

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I agree with you entirely as to what should happen if the above were true. However, just from the varied responses on this thread, I don’t see the consensus that you do.

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45

Well, sure - if you drank your stove that evening, and the thread was titled “What are you drinking?” :joy:

If you had a cocktail at a restaurant or a friend’s place, also yes.

The distinction in the OP is not a stoves vs drinks one.

It is not so much about entirely misplaced posts as about posts which do answer the thread title, but don’t fit the meta category that the original thread was placed under,

To @msbean’s point, would moving the whole thread to Culture fix the issue?

Not that we should. Just curious.

.
(We had this exact discussion on the thread itself a year or two ago - I wish someone would find it - I tried but couldn’t.)

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46

I know we did, but times change. The mods helped me find it before I posted this thread, and the result was the same as here. Mixed.

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47

Would you please add a link? I know many of us are repeating ourselves.

Yes, it’s always mixed. It was mixed when people wondered whether we should be sharing anything other than food too - same arguments.

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You are testing the extremes of my knowledge of how to work this site. But I’m going to try.

starting around post 775 and

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I’ve read Sasha’s links. Seems good to know that what folk are saying on this thread is what they said in 2019. So, there’s consistency in the inconsistency, if you see what i mean.

(PS: Thanks for the links, Sasha. I didnt know you could link to a particular post on a thread. )

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50

I didn’t know I could either :slight_smile:I knew others could.

51

I’m not a prolific WFD poster, but I do read them all so take my 2 cents for what it’s worth. To me this seems like a solution in search of a problem. There are only a few posters posting restaurant meals, so it’s easy enough to scroll past if you’re not interested. If it becomes some sort of critical mass where you wake up and there are 100 new posts about restaurants in the WFD thread I could see revisiting the topic. Personally, I like people mentioning their day, seeing a bit of their yard or whatever, and I’m always interested to see what wines @paryzer brings to dinner, etc.

I’m involved in a number of neighborhood groups and I’ve learned to be wary of actions that might drive people away when you’re trying to bring them in, so would err on the side of inclusion.

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52

Um, there are Canadians, Brits, Spaniards, Belgian residents, Malaysians and assorted other non- Americans posting and reading HO and WFD, dontcha know? :wink:

I ignore the WFD posts that don’t interest me. No reason for me to tell others what to post, or what belongs. Sometimes I skip WFD because I like posts with less replies.

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53

Of course I know. Unless you’re joking. It was for the sake of argument. We could consolidate up a storm, or we could subdivide it. You could have regions within the US, the US as a single region with other countries being their own region, or even a global region. One single topic for restaurants on Earth.

I think the reason to subdivide is that it makes it easier for people to find what they want/need. It keeps discussions manageable in length. It helps posters connect their content with the people who are most likely to be looking for just that type of content.

I was also on chowhound for years, and I almost never read the WFD threads, or even noticed them. At that point in time, I was more interested in discovering the eateries in my hometown of Los Angeles, and that was a hopping board indeed. Maybe WFD gets all the eyeballs because people post there and not elsewhere. Maybe people post there and not elsewhere because the regional boards are not hopping. Is it a chicken and egg problem?

Regardless, it’s abundantly clear that for the 5 or so people that would prefer the WFD to be primarily home cooking (me included), there are at least that many who feel strongly that it should cover everything. So, c’est la vie.

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54

We have a Canada board on here and it might get 3 posts a year. Lol That’s why your post touched a nerve.

I left another WFD elsewhere because there were some cliques I didn’t like, and a few people took my comments about another poster as mean.

We had run-ins before. Maybe we sometimes we outgrow , tire or burn bridges wrt online topics or forums.

55

We are less than an hour from the border with Canada, and I would be thrilled to have an active CA board to solicit suggestions, once the border opens and they let us back in. We’ve had some terrific times exploring Granville Island, the many many Asian places in Richmond BC, and the shawerma on every corner places in downtown VAN.

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56

Lol I’ve got more suggestions for the border closer to Port Huron, Detroit and Buffalo. I’m 45 minutes from Port Huron, 2 h from Detroit and 2.5 h from Buffalo. :slight_smile:
Great food in BC, but I haven’t been since 2016 (Kelowna). I haven’t dined in Vancouver or Richmond BC since 2005.

I’ve been to NYC 6 times, Pittsburgh 10 times, Ohio 3 times, Boston once, Detroit once and DC once since 2016.

Despite being in Canada, the NJ /NY /PA boards are more relevant to me than a national Cdn board could be.

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The only regional boards with any action are Bay Area and NJ.
I don’t understand your militant attitude over this issue.

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