Citing “Nazi-like censorship practices” on CHOW’s sister site Chowhound, the New York City–based blog Eater announces its intent to publish all “Banned on Chowhound” posts.
Quite a few posts on Eater have expressed irritation and confusion with the way Chowhound chooses to police their boards. Take a gander at “Banned On Chowhound: Thou Shalt Not Derail the Morimoto Express” and “Banned on Chowhound: Chowhound Explains! (Sort Of),” which are two of the more recent pieces on the subject.
Eater isn’t the only blog to take issue with Chowhound. Last April Gastronomie highlighted some examples of singular Chowhound moderation and concluded:
I’m not saying all this to bash Chowhound, or to tell you not to frequent the site. Because, really, it can be a good resource (obviously, since I’m still using it for research). Just be aware that you may be getting a somewhat narrow, “houndish” view of the restaurant world.
Her follow-up post in October showed that she continued to give Chowhound a chance but was now, in her words, “so sick of Chowhound.”
Sam at Becks & Posh wrote in September of 2006 that she was perplexed why one of her posts had been deleted and came to the following decision:
Because I do not know why I was deleted—I am not sure how to continue from hereon in. Time is precious. Maybe they are planning to delete all my future posts. Who knows? I can’t run the risk of wasting my time trying to find out by putting effort into trying to give my time to a community that simply shows me their scissors and goes snip, snip, snip. No worries. Although I liked the very casual way I could make recommendations on Chowhound, I can just as easily continue to write my restaurant reviews here, on this blog. And I shall. Goodbye, from me, Chowhound.
amen.
it is a bit unsettling to have posts moved, deleted, rearranged and variously kicked around without some explanation or reason.
i now know what it must feel like to read a newspaper edited and monitored by a communist regime.
that said, i have deleted chowhound from the favorites, but i will still read Grinder.
What’s the most frustrating of all is to post a question in Site Talk asking why a post or thread was deleted or for clarification of the rules–and to have THAT post deleted!
OTOH, the new CNET tech team could hardly be more open or responsive.
A few months back, several of us were posting about wine shops. Informative, if a bit opinionated, but absolutely not one single posting was abusive, rude, obscene or personal. One of the other writers and I found all of our comments deleted. No reasons given, and no requests for a reason have been replied to.
Like Bumpercrop, I no longer use Chowhound, but I still enjoy Grinder.
Here’s a pretty anodyne comment of mine recently deleted from a thread about the absence of posting guidelines:
“Many of us are hoping that the acquisition of Chowhound by a large public company will result in greater transparency in moderation. We shall see, but I’m optimistic–so far, for example, the tech team is doing a great job.”
The deletion of postings seems VERY random and it’s extremely frustrating to have a post deleted w/o explanation. At the very least CH should replace your post w/ a brief notification. It does come off as suppressive.
It is totally frustrating to have your posts continually deleted with no explanation. I am trying to find out why a particular restaurant is not “allowed” to be discussed any longer and I keep receiving a vague response. If people on the board are genuinely asking questions about a particular restaurant, what to order, etc., and other posters are responding without any offending comments, why would it be deleted? Did the restaurant ask not to be discussed on Chowhound? Do the moderators think we work for the restaurant? Even more annoying is when you post a long response about a bunch of restaurants and because this one particular restaurant is mentioned, the entire post is deleted. Isn’t this kind of the point of Chowhound? To be able to discuss where to eat?
I will NEVER waste a single keystroke on Chowhound again. They are cavalier and arbitrary in their deletions, and obviously have enormous resources ready to delete posts in a matter of minutes. This is particularly true of any posts regarding their policies.
It’s a shame, because it is otherwise a pretty valuable resource, but they delete posts based on their own snobbish poseur-like opinions, and THAT abridges free speech.
Any garbage about “well-pruned” is just defense of heinous censorship.