Aw heck, I hadn’t looked at its location.The Village is a pain. I hear it’s worth it though! I’ll hit my other two favorite stores there maybe since I’ll need to scrounge for a parking spot. Rocky & Maggie’s and The British Isles. The latter has a rather large import food section. I once fought for a spot to try the Indian place there, Shiva and it was a disappointment.
I don’t do Facebook.
I have enough problems already.
As I recall, I set an account up just for that so you may be right.
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Indeed, it’s not a perfect solution for those running these pages, but when there’s no profile it sends up a red flag. I was on the CH page for a while, emphasis on “was.” Not much going on there so no worries.
You can still read what is posted there without participating. It’s an “open” group as opposed to “closed” or “secret” so have a look. And I speak only of the Houston CH page…
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Me too, lets continue this on private message. If anyone can reach James Christinian and wifeacita have at it. I see he’s still giving it the ole college try on CH occasionally.
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Shouldn’t somebody be inviting those guys to HO? They seem to be pretty active to me!
I did, via their yahoo page, which literally one day just went dead. You’ll have to join to invite! You may download my cat’s pic for your profile. You’re welcome.
That sucks. The Katy/Ft Bend admin posted this yesterday:
Joining this group…since it has come up more than once here lately I
just wanted to let everyone know that we are not real picky about who
we admit to this group. The old policy was that we’d let anyone
in and then deal with individuals that caused problems. Spammers, people
promoting blogs or other pages, ect. That didn’t work out so well.
(porn) The last thing anyone wants to have to do is babysit a FB page. So now we look at the profiles of those that ask to be admitted.
If you have no profile pic or if nowhere on your page it says you are
from anywhere around here, you’ll most likely be ignored. If you feel
like you should have been admitted…PM me. We are for the more the
merrier. Thanks for being a part of this group. I enjoy everyone’s posts and opinions. I hope others do as well!
Did you have a Facbook picture or location listed? I think group admins can go overboard with requirements and “verification” because Facebook allows you to set your privacy levels so people can’t see your page, your friends, pages liked or where you live, worked or went school. If you don’t want to show those things, you shouldn’t have to just to get vetted. It’s silly. I didn’t know they had a vetting or requirements like that because it’s not on the page when you join their closed group but if that is their stupid rule then it should be posted on the closed group page for all to see who want to join.
Lately I’ve noticed the admins of these Facebook food groups get a little power drunk. Cleverly Stone on Fox 26 and has that radio show that no one listens to has a group called Houston Foodie Friends. She vets people into her group too. I think it’s stupid and a waste of time when you have a group of a large size as she does but I get the impression it makes her feel important. She “drops” news about chefs or new places but it’s outdated because other local news have already covered it. Maybe because she only shares news from certain writers she’s friends with. She never posts anything written or covered by Alison Cook, Greg Morago or Katharine from what I’ve observed. Whatever the reason, I’ve gotten the impression that she does that so she seems to be relevant and important whenever she names drop all the time. I’ve also heard she moderates some people, limiting them from sharing or writing posts, placing their posts on pending status so it can be reviewed by her first before it’s posted to the group. Crazy.
Earlier this week, news of Austin chef Paul Qui’s arrest was reported everywhere. Someone shared it in her group and people were discussing it, including reports of other local chefs that have been arrested. She deleted it. Then she wrote a separate post that said:
Just a heads up - I deleted a thread that recapped the arrest records
of some chefs. I don’t think it’s relevant to bring up these old issues
on this food group page. If you do not agree with this decision, I’m
sorry. Maybe start a different group to discuss these issues please.
Thank you.
Cleverley Stone
Page Admin. UPDATE at 5:16 PM:
A comment below crystalized why this original post concerned me. The
original post contained a mug shot of one chef and named the other chef.
I do think this issue is very important to discuss, but let’s keep
names out of it and let’s not criticize other members for their opinions
please. #KeepItCivil. You are always welcome to DM me with any concerns. Thank you.
A few members of the group disagreed with her saying it’s on topic with what the group is about (the group discusses food, restaurants, bars, cookbooks, chefs, recipes, everything that centers around food and restaurants) but she wasn’t having it and said she thought it was distasteful with the mugshots and all. Then she flatout accused the person who posted it of having an agenda and purposely sharing the mugshot and other reports, one taken from her radio show where she discussed a certain local chef being arrested who lied about at first, when every news piece that reported on Paul Qui’s arrest included the mugshot. Of course that wasn’t true and that turned me off to her. Instead she thought it would be best for people to start a Facebook group to discuss mental illness in the restaurant industry. Channel 13’s Miya Shay told her that’s pointless and counterproductive and doesn’t see why things like this can’t be discussed here. Not everything is positive:
A healthy discussion on an important topic isn’t a bad thing. Besides,
everything is public record anyway. Sometimes it’s important to look at
the imperfect side of an industry, in order to grow and make everything
better.
Cleverly responded:
I agree with you about the importance of this issue. I think that this topic may deserve
its own group discussion page on Facebook. Someone would need to step
up, create it and moderate it.
What? Your group is about restaurants and food and the people involved in it. Seems the be the forum for it but I guess she can’t get notoriety and accolades off it with cameras and Houston Restaurant Weeks.
I’ve heard stories about Cleverly wanting her food comped all the time and thinking she’s bigger than what she is. I never paid those stories any mind but they’re very prevalent and from what I saw in her group this week (the Paul Qui thing), I’m inclined to believe it’s true. She likes to be worshiped and praised and have her yes men and people. She has that a plenty in her group.
I was in a cooking group for a while and posted in it. I eventually deleted the post, as I often do. I got a stern “warning” from an admin that I would be banned if I did that again because it is solely up to her whether to delete anything. I politely backed out of the room because I think she was a little bat sh*t. There are lots of groups to participate in, no need to deal with neurosis!
I saw this also, though it doesn’t really work because you can’t see this post unless you are already in the group. It is a closed group. Jaymes says she’s even been blocked and can’t even get to the “join” button to try again so I guess she’s given up. I think she would like the group for the most part, and could certainly add to and expand the members’ Katy options. She knows all the little gems.
So, if I’m not an avid “Facebookie”, having an elaborate page and making lots of updates, then I’m not welcome to participate in the one little corner that I might be interested in?
OK, that actually makes sense.
C’est la vie.
Let’s eat!
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Just a way of weeding out the spammers, not perfect. I’m not one of the facebook fearful. I block all my exes in Texas.
I get that one big problem with these online groups is the enormous number of spammers, bots, shills, trolls, and other assorted “undesirables” that want to join for no good reason. I was an admin at another forum and one of my jobs was to go through all those “requests to join” to weed out the one or two legitimate requests each week from the hundred or so non-legitimate requests. So, yes, it’s a problem. But I, and the other admins, managed to sift through them with some degree of intelligence. We never just automatically blocked anyone because we couldn’t immediately figure out who they were or why they wanted to join. After all, being too lazy or arrogant to do our “homework” and discover who might be an asset to our organization wasn’t THEIR problem - it was ours - and pretty easily correctible with just a minimum of investigation and research. And it was in our interest to have the site grow with the kind of membership that provides good information and content. If we had any doubt as to whether or not the requester was that sort of person, we sent them a quick email - something along the lines of “why do you want to join?” The spambots and jerks basically never ever responded. Maybe a little more trouble but, like I said, worth it if you want your site to grow. Of course, no need to concern yourself with that trivial little chore if you really don’t.
After somebody called this to their attention over at Katy/Ft. Bend Foodies, I did access their page again. The complete blocking seems to have been mitigated, and now I can see some sort of stern admonition. And, the “request to join” button has been restored.
But, I repeat, after spending many months as an admin at another website, and knowing that it’s certainly more than possible to handle this problem in a more welcoming and professional manner, I no longer care to bother trying to make inroads with that crowd.
However, I really sincerely thank all of you that gave me a hand. At least we figured out what was going on. As I said previously, at first, I had no clue. Thought perhaps the link was broken, or the site was temporarily down and kept going back to double-check. Big waste of time for nothing.
Just for the record - no I’m not a big Facebookie. But it’s not like I have no page at all, or like I have a blank page. I do have a page. It has entries. I have “friends.”
You might not be able to figure out absolutely everything about me from my page, but you’d have to be a complete imbecile not to realize that I’m a real human being.
Either a complete imbecile or somebody that really just doesn’t give a damn.
