Dave, possible new forum?

Dave, Tried before to post to you, but I think it got lost in limbo, so am trying again. Here is a copy from the thread "Cooks on Call...we'll answer your questions"

judycooksey
Nov 6, 2004
7:24 PM
Kathy,

Boy this is great info on Fruit Cakes and with the Holidays Coming Up... I think it would be a wonderful idea if you copied both yours and Glenda's interchange and created a new "Fruit Cake" thread. I'm sure everyone will post recipes, etc. It excites me to just think about it!!!

Judy

MistyMeadows
Nov 6, 2004
8:52 PM

Judy, thanks for the suggestion. I did a new thread for Fruit Cake information, here is the link:

[HYPERLINK@davesgarden.com]

I mentioned to Dave that I thought we should have the Cooks on Call as it's own forum as I see this thread getting very long. I have tried to find the post to Dave, but can't find it anywhere, nor any reply. I think this Cooks on Call is a wonderful idea and I have answered several questions already as you can see. :) I love it and will help anyone in distress with cooking questions. If I don't know the answer, I will try very hard to find the answer. I don't want all the great recipes to get lost in Cooks on Call or vise versa...

I will forward this post to Dave again, because I am thinking it got lost before Dave, Terry, or Trish even got to see it. I know that if it couldn't be posted, Dave would have contacted me. :) Kathy

Dave, bumping this in hopes you get a chance to read and respond. I've had others ask me if I've heard anything. Thanks, Kathy

Kathy, I think it's a great idea. And if I can get Dave's attention, I'll give him a nudge this direction. I know he's pretty covered up until mid- to late-week this week....

Kathy, I wonder if a "sticky" thread at the top of the Recipes Forum could accomplish the same thing?

Darius, I thought of that, but then I see the thread getting very long and if it had its own forum, people could immediately find or go back to answers based on the title of the threads. Good to see you, I've worried about you....haven't seen you in a while and I just figured you had one heck of a good birthday party :)

Terry, I know that Dave is real good about responding to posts, so I just assumed that he was very busy. I bumped it so it didn't get to the bottom and gone (it appears that Dave's Garden forum is a very busy one....:) )

Happy Day, Kathy

This message was edited Nov 9, 2004 2:13 PM

Terry, if you like it go ahead and create the forum.

I like the idea, but my hesitation with proceeding is along the same line as Kathy's - will it become confused with the recipes forum?

And - from a "forum management" perspective - is it necessary to have yet another cooking-related forum (we have recipes and canning/freezing forums) and will it receive enough consistent year-round traffic to warrant it?

I, too, have some hesitation.

Seems like these questions should be handled in "Recipes" somehow. There have been many over the years already, and I think adequately handled.

On the other hand, Kathy has a good point about searching titles... if more newbies would learn to "search".

When I want a recipe, I like going to the recipe forum for it. Sometimes it gets frustrating because there other food related things on the recipes forum, but not necessarily recipes. I hate muddling through these to get to a recipe.

I have answered a lot of questions on the recipe forum and now on Cooks on Call, and also on Canning/Freezing. It would be nice if the "questions/answers" were concentrated in one area, as well. I think all 3 forums are very important, yet with all on one forum, the posts tend to "get lost".

And at least once a day I've answered someone's cooking question or looked up something. I think that more will ask if there were a forum.

Also, I would make the name of the forum something simple like Food Questions Answered (or I've recently picked up a nickname...Mrs. Food, LOL)you could name it Ask Mrs. Food. (joking)....

Just my "food for thought"....:)

Kathy, what do we do with topics like trans-fats... keep those just in the Health Forum and not even in Recipes or the proposed new forum although they relate heavily to cooking questions?

(Playing Devil's Advocate here.)

I think that if there is a question about it or anything that is ingested, then it should go in this forum. Someone may want to hyperlink it to the health forum, or vice versa. I've not seen any questions in the recipe forum either regarding trans-fat, but then I haven't read every thread either :) In summary, I think that particular question could go in either forum (health or a new one) but not the recipe forum.

I don't believe your a Devil's Advocate. LOL............

Yes, but these killers are so good. :)

Cooking is for pure enjoyment as well as the plants. And you and I like to eat healthy (I, most of the time), but I really enjoy cooking more than eating it. As a diabetic, I can't eat much of any of the recipes, but I love doing them and making people happy; I expect growing plants is the same way. I know that you and I both have offered many healthy choices in our recipe forum, and we have "enlightened" a lot of people that just don't realize how easy it really is to cook up fresh veggies as opposed to opening a bag or a can. Very rarely will you find anything processed in my house. I keep Rice-A-Roni and Kraft Mac & Cheese on hand (in case of emergencies) for the grandchildren. [don't throw those rotten tomatoes at me]....

I also know how excited I get looking at our great lettuce, tomato plants, scrumptious yellow squash, etc.....

but this could all be off the subject at hand LOL ;)

Kathy, I agree that you and I are among the top "healthy" cooks on DG (at least amongst those who post), LOL.

(And, like you, I enjoy the cooking sometimes more than the eating!)

segue: you sent me your farm newsletter recently and I seem to have mis-placed it. Please send it again?

I know I'm probably in the minority here (shoot, I may the ONLY one who holds this opinion), but here goes.

I got to thinking about this, and when I tossed out the "hey that sounds great" note, I hadn't really thought through this idea.

We have 102 forums currently:
57 are purely gardening-related (including 1 regional, 5 trading)
8 are specific groups
8 are home-related
20 are miscellaneous

The others are administrative (DG & PDB helpdesk-related) and "special projects" such as the beta discussion forum earlier this year.

That's not only a lot of forums for the typical user to figure out what they want to visit and participate in, it's a lot of territory for administrators to cover.

I recently suggested another new forum, for PDB "how-to" questions. (And possibly another one for journal help.)

I guess my point is this: I would like to challenge us to think about what really fits with Dave's Garden. Are we a one-site-fits-all site? Or a gardening site with a few closely-related topics? (My fear is that in our desire to fulfill our users' requests, we're "diluting" the main reason for being here - which isto be for and by gardeners.)

That doesn't mean I don't enjoy or appreciate the other forums we have, but - picking on cooking for a minute - there are several EXCELLENT cooking-specific websites "out there." I don't expect them to have three or four gardening-related forums, so by the same token, why would we have three or four diet/recipe/cooking tips forums? (I'm ducking for cover now - I know our resident cooks have some potato skin scraps or soft tomatoes they're going to start throwing my way ;o)

Terry, I agree completely. That was one of my objections to a "Collectibles" forum.

It gets really hard since we have become a "Family" on DG and want to know what other things our family members enjoy.

Terry, I don't plant flowers and the majority of forums are based on flowers, but on the other side of gardening, the food part of gardening, I think that they go hand in hand. Is gardening limited to flowers, [which by the way, some are edible]. I am perfectly fine to leave it as is, but I think that we can better utilize the sites if we stick to what they are for....i.e. recipes for recipes, canning and freezing for exactly that, and questions for questions and I get asked a lot of questions, I even get emails from DG members. I don't mean for this to sound like my personal forum, because there are so many wonderful teachers out there. I mean, there are specific forums for specific types of flowers and I am in no way undermining the work and joy involved in flower garden, but there are different aspects to that as well.

I understand where you are coming from, but I think that being able to answer these questions in a timely fashion is important. I'd be more apt to answer a question I can see right away before it gets lost in the shuffle of the recipe forum.

I will respect whatever decision you make on this and will continue to answer questions, but I feel that the food forums are just as important....especially because this is the one place I go to online and stay there for long periods of time. [heck, my family will tell you I live here].... I feel like I am home when I am here and I know I'm not alone. Hope this all makes sense. :) Kathy

P.S. What about a test run? or a survey? Now I'm playing devil's advocate....Darius, you taught me well ha,ha...Happy Day, K

This message was edited Nov 11, 2004 11:30 AM

I pick and chose the forums I visit based on what interests me either on an ongoing basis, or at any given moment. As a user, it doesn't concern me in the least if there are forums on basket weaving or whatever. If I am not interested in a given subject, I don't feel the need to participate, but respect and appreciate those that do have that interest. However, as Terry mentioned, from an administrative perspective, it can see where adding additional forums that then have to be maintained can become quite burdensome. I think the non-garden related forums are nice-to-haves in that they do provide one stop shopping so to speak, but I think asking DG to be all things to all people is a bit beyond what I assume their goals and mission to be.

Perhaps a suitable approach that might make it easier for both users and administrators to maintain some organization to the forums is to divide them similar to "garden beds", where "Kitchen Gardens" could be a category to include the growing, cooking, and eating of edible plants, and "Flower Gardens" could be a category related to growing, propagating, and arranging or other wise using flowering plants. I'm just thinking off the top of my head here and haven't thought this through so please don't jump on me either. I'm merely throwing it out for consideration.

As for searching for previous threads that have addressed my interest or question de jeur, I have done that. The problem is each time I have, the results have been "no exact match" and the search returns dozens of possible threads with hundreds of posts each that have any mention of any of the keywords I put in my search. Buy the time I have browsed the first 2 or 3 of them, I have totally lost track and interest in what I wanted to know in the first place. The artificial intelligence built into seach engines can only do so much. Since threads frequently wander quite far from the topic in the subject line or the intentions of the originator, there is always going to be duplication and overlap. So I think some periodic clean up and reorganizing and archiving of threads and forums is going to be the likely outcome in any case.

Pville, I have been a member here a long time... and when someone asks a question that pings my mind about a previous thread that had lots of the answers, I often cannot find the old thread in a "Search" either.

darius...I hope to get to that point someday, but as a relative newbie, and probably a fairly representative one, you see then how daunting using forum search for info can be. Some of the best info has come from those like you that have posted a hyperlink to previous threads that I was not able to find with a search. Because I had no way to have any personal recall of it, for me it was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Pville... it is STILL a needle in the haystack... maybe I just don't get the keywords right even though I know what I am searching to find...

I have often wondered about a search within the forums instead of searching all the forums. What do you think about that?

You can do that. Once you enter a key word or phrase, the results page will also allow you to narrow it down to username and/or forum.

Don't know if this was mentioned previously in this thread, but trying to think of a creative way to make all parties happy here......

Could the Calling All Cooks thread be left a thread and become a STICKY so it's always at the top of the Recipes forum? That way it's easy to find to post a 911 cooking question and reply to that plea for help!

Exiting stage right......I don't visit the recipe forum at all unless a post elsewhere piques my curiousity.

Terry, Silly me!!! You're right :)

Perhaps a Sticky until it gets too long, then start a new thread?

Might be the best "work-around" LOL

It might even be more effective to use just a single sticky not to actually post Q&A too, but to post only links to the answers where ever they might be. Otherwise, as you say, that thread is just going to become like any other and get to long also and eventually hunting thru multiple stickies is going to pose the exact same issues. There may also be an element of perceived favoritism with these stickies, and those who don't participate in multiple threads that are anchored at the top of a forum may feel they should carry no more priority and have to consistantly be scrolled through every time they want to get to their favorites. Don't shoot me here, it personnaly makes not difference to me one way or the other, but in my experience the purpose of a sticky is for forum administrators to make annoucements or post reminders applicable to all uses of that forum. As such they can be posted to only by admins and not replied to. This keeps it "clean" so to speak in terms of succinctly serving that purpose, and when the purpose has been fulfilled, the admin removes the sticky.

I see a lot of others asking for a new forum, so thought I would bump this again before it gets lost in the shuffle. Thanks from those of us that frequent anything that relates to cooking and gardening here on DG, for your consideration in this. :) Kathy

No new forum on this subject matter, but we do have a "sticky" at the top of the Recipes Forum. Please come over and ask your questions, so that all of our efforts don't seem fruitless (no pun intended)...Happy Day, Kathy

This message was edited Nov 18, 2004 11:54 AM