Won’t be wasting my time THERE any more.

Now the moderation of eG is not perfect, but at least it makes sense, and there are actual rules. If you don’t have rules, then it all falls apart. Of course, whether or not you have too many rules is another matter altogether, but I don’t have any desire to enter into that discussion.

The baby with the bathwater phenomenon is truly odd. Besides pissing people off by deleting their posts and offering canned reasons why, they “over prune” to the extent that the board becomes less useful. How often has a story that affects practically nobody outside the South been moved to a “more appropriate board” only to languish because practically nobody cares about “Food and Media” without also caring about the “Food and Media” in regards to their own region. Why would somebody in Denver give a crap about Greg Cox’s top 10 and why would I give a crap about the top 10 in some other city. Unless I was headed there and then, of course, I’d go to the freaking regional board for that area, not wade through the “Food and Media” board looking for a post dissecting the local food writers top 10 list for the town I’m headed to. I mean, agree or not with the local critics, their rankings do inspire an interesting discussion about everyone’s own list and make for great reading.

I was on the Spain board looking into an upcoming trip and stumbled onto a thread about El Bulli. In case you don’t know, the place is quite remote. In the midst of a very long thread about the food, somebody asked the OP where they stayed when they went there. The moderators were on that like white on rice. “Please discuss hotels on a website devoted to hotels. This is about food.” Jesus. Heaven forbid your site should be a useful resource for somebody. Were they afraid that the topic would spin out of control? Somebody who had chosen Chowhound as a source of info had the opportunity to find out from somebody who’d just eaten at a place where they were headed if there was a handy hotel nearby. One stop shopping. Instead, they get a slap on the wrist.

And if I end up eating at a restaurant more than once a year, I usually get to know the people who work there. I like to know how they operate, who they are.