yeah, but it’s not shilling. it’s education, it’s sharing, it’s not selling.
CH already tried the “Heh we’re having a party” advertising routine. an eatery spamming their truffle week is interesting info for those who are close enough to go, if they wanted. for the rest of the billions of people of the world, it’s spam - it takes up my time. when the first “permitted spamming” was introduced there was rafts of messages every day from the same eateries shilling events or menus or specials or “tonight’s live band.” neat idea, does not work out so well in the end.
and no, at this point the way the board is organized I cannot avoid having to deal with it. it’s part of the pages and pages of threads. think about this - every thread shows up, and stuff with new messages are marked. what is going to happen when there’s 15,000 threads? the “latest” click option shows them all - and the dot new stuff does not float to the top. the “unread” click option has some kind of issues - it appears a bit non-functional at the moment.
the same issue applies to the profanity thing. you’re asking moderators to make a judgement call - and you can be quite sure that sooner or later some yahoo is coming in with a string of nothing but expletives deleted from start to finish and when he is censured for that message he’ll be screaming blooding expletives deleted to high heaven because somebody else was not censured.
Moderators have to make judgment calls. I’ve moderated some boards, too. If you want to avoid decisions, you have to punt moderation to a bot.
Obviously, a restaurant shouldn’t be allowed to post their menus, specials or music schedule every day, but we can’t have the world divided into black and white with no shades of gray.
I think you misunderstood what I was saying was inarguably shilling:
That’s shilling.
Now, if the way this site is set up is that you can’t choose not to follow a board covering an area you’re not interested in, that’s a problem with the site design, not a reason to ban particularly interesting announcements by restaurants.
I think HO needs a Markets or Chains board. On CH, the Trader Joe’s Yea/Nay/Meh quarterly threads got so large that they were changed, by general hound consensus, to monthly. TJ’s Pumpkinvasion began this week, and their Holidaze is about a month away. I’ll start quarterly threads for TJ’s and Costco if there’s somewhere to put them.
Hopefully, participation will eventually be great enough to merit monthly rebooting.
True, but not everyone get banned for the same level of mistake. Some people get banned because they repeatedly violate important rules and being mean spirited. Some other people “fight” for certain things because they believe they have been wronged, and in that process getting banned.
Basically, not everyone getting arrested by the cops has committed the same level of wrong doings.
Not having been here very long I find it next to impossible to have any viable ideas about how I’d like this site to be. The fact that Robert began HO is wonderful because while I did enjoy the earlier versions of CH I find the 9.2015 iteration abominable. And no, I was ever banned nor suspended, nor did I swan off in a huff.
The site is difficult for me to read vis a vis text colors, background noise, and all the detours one has to take to get to where one is going. That the new regime has revised the site for the benefit of commercial posts reduces the community of contributors with worthy information on a variety of subjects. I believe Mr Leff wanted CH/C to be informational rather than congregational to begin with
Finally, as someone else has said perhaps we ought to give HO time to grow on its own timeline adding various boards and refinements as it does. Moderation of a sort is needed but certainly not the heavy-handed petulant type that we have seen lately. Language befitting responsible, well informed adults is more than desirable. “… yes, spelling, grammar, and punctuation DO matter.”
A very sincere but loud apology to Sampson. I’m too late for an edit of my post. Perhaps I ought to lobby for an extended edit time… I need all the help I can get.
I was suspended not banned . served my two week suspension , replied to M . No reply back . tried to log on with no luck . F. it So being suspended and banned turns out the same .
I don’t read all the posts so I am late to this discussion. Please focus on the question at hand, which is what can we do to build a site where there is a sense of community and there is good camaraderie.
We all can have strong opinion on a variety of topics. And we will run into people whom we disagree with, sometimes very strongly. That is ok. Please refrain from name calling. Agree to disagree if its getting heated.
1a… What I like in a food forum: dialogue sharing knowledge about food (growing, cooking, restaurants,) in an accessible format. Also even-handed moderation.
1b. What I don’t like in a food forum: ads / promos / people pushing their business, a focus on things not related to food, haphazard moderation.
What I’d like to see here: people who are passionate about food freely, joyously sharing their knowledge.
Intentionally skipped.
Inadvertently already answered, but to elaborate: I’d like the moderators to be known, I’d like for them to work together, and if comes down to a situation where banning a user is being considered, I’d like for all moderators to agree.
I suggest you set some basic guidelines, now, in terms of un/acceptable behavior and be firm with enforcement. Always present a united front, and don’t let emotions dictate moderation behavior.
I think an “Introduce Yourself” thread would be handy with fostering community spirit.
