What happened to the regional discussion boards?

[gutreactions]

Your newly merged boards don’t make sense. What happened? How can you lump Hawaii with D.C., with the Caribbean?

[NotJrvedivici (Junior)]

Don’t know if this helps…

Boards merger

A few lower traffic boards are merged in order to avoid the problem of ‘perceived low traffic-> little incentive to click into the board -> cause even lower traffic’ syndrome. These boards are merged to stimulate traffic: Regional: Midwest-> All other US Southeast -> All other US Rest of California-> SF+Cal Southwest-> All other US DC -> All other US Northwest mountain states-> All other US Vancouver->Quebec and Canada Topical: Fermented-> Cooking+Ingredients Vegetarian/ Vegan + Othe…

[gutreactions]

Thanks, Joliet. I missed this explanation of the change. Does it help? Yes and no…

[meatn3 (equal opportunity eater in the NC Triangle)]

So far I’m not liking it. Areas far outside my interest are showing up on my feed…Any chance of fine tuning it?

[hungryonion]

I think we certainly can do that. What we are hoping to do is over the next few months is, if we bring in new traffic via the Q&A series, that we can get traffic up in lower traffic regions such that it organically demands a finer geographical carveout, without the previous situation of ‘Chowhound board categorization structure without the Chowhound traffic’ empty board syndrome, which can be quite a deterrent for new participants looking at the forum for the first time- ‘No one’s here (on the specific regional board) anyway, let’s not waste time. move on’.

[RedJim (Jimmy)]

I’m really surprised that others from the Detroit area haven’t gravitated here from Chowhound and Urbanspoon. There were a number of very active eaters on both those sites. I miss their posts.

ETA: Or they see only you posting about Detroit here and need an another nudge to join the party.

[hungryonion]

You probably need to invite them here. Many people aren’t aware of the site.

Tip #8- How to find your pals/ favorite posters on any forums

A comment came up recently that a user wants to look for another forum user, so I am sharing some ways to look for particular users from another forum, e.g. eGullet that you want to invite. Don’t have their contacts? Often you can still find them with googling. The more distinctive the user ID is, the easier. Private message them if that forum has private messaging. Most forums do. Search for user on eGullet https://forums.egullet.org/search/ and private message them. Google “user ID”, G…

[bbqboy]

I’m with you. For those of us outside major population centers, it is a death knell for participation. I wish there were much broader categories rather than the tight city boards. I think the board proliferation at CH was the start of the downfall because everyone just talks to their little cadre of posters.

[gutreactions]

bbqboy, I think a good, carefully thought out mix of both big cities and regions is the way to go. I do not think the Caribbean has much to do with D.C./Beltway, for example.

[meatn3 (equal opportunity eater in the NC Triangle)]

I’d rather see the quieter areas grouped a little less broadly ie NE, SE, Midwest, NW, SW.

But the site is still young and growing!

[hungryonion]

@gutreactions

I do not think the Caribbean has much to do with D.C./Beltway, for example.

I agree with you. The only reason the Americas and Caribbean is lumped with the Rest of US because we probably have fewer than a handful of posts for those regions. So for now, rather than having them in the EMEA, or AP board, which are farther away geographically, they are together with US.

[boogiebaby]

Interesting… I was searching for an old thread on the CH board and came across a thread about issues with the site. This was one of the posts on the thread, from a CH employee! (emphasis mine)

patsully about 21 hours ago
Hi jen,

We very much prefer more specific location tags, both to make the site easier to navigate and to enable new features like maps, which we’re starting to roll out to discussions in Restaurants & Bars with location tags in the US & Canada: http://www.chowhound.com/post/maps-pr…

While having large regional boards allowed you to just check in on new posts for “Europe” or even “Southeast,” it is very confusing for new users who have to dig deep to find any activity from a specific country, state, or city of interest. We’ve kept these legacy locations around as optional tags to make sure to get eyes on new posts, but long term we want to encourage everyone to use multiple, specific location tags whenever possible.

> Otherwise, you end up in a situation where Washington DC is somehow grouped together with the Caribbean…

Finally a reminder that your homepage feed will display a de-duped set of discussions from all of the tags you follow. You can explore the full set of location tags here: http://www.chowhound.com/browse/locat…

Give a shout with any questions!

[hungryonion]

We need to lump Antarctica with our Rest of US, Caribbean and Americas board…

[meatn3 (equal opportunity eater in the NC Triangle)]

I find their new roll out of maps interesting. There had been some mapping in the past. A very interesting and prolific poster, RWOrange, had devoted an enormous amount of time to the mapping project. As had several other people. When CH arbitrarily decided to remove the maps it created a bit of ill will. At that point they lost RWOrange for good. Which was a big loss in my book. She has a very inquisitive mind and approaches projects as a bit of a mad scientist. The results were always intriguing and educational. Her old posts (hasn’t been active on CH in a good 3 years or more) continue to be commented upon…

[Gourmanda]

@boogiebaby

Finally a reminder that your homepage feed will display a de-duped set of discussions from all of the tags you follow.

Please help me out…what is “de-duped”?

[small_h]

@Gourmanda

Please help me out…what is “de-duped”?

With duplication removed.