ottawa foodies

Hi folks. I've watched with interest the enthusiastic use of the "Restaurant Closings" and "New Openings" Forum threads on the site over the past couple of years.

My initial site concept had no Forums section at all. Rather, any discussion would be related to a specific Vendor or Food, and it would take place under that entry. With that model, "Restaurant Closings" comments would go under the appropriate vendor, to be read by those who are researching that vendor. Similarly, "New Openings" would involve creating a new vendor entry and posting developments there. However, I'm keen to have you all use this site in whatever way works best for you and the Forums section seems to have become the place for this sort of gossip!

Given the popularity of the Forums over the Food/Vendor section, does anyone have ideas on how best to bridge the two for situations like openings/closings? For now, I'm experimenting with copying forum posts to a particular vendor at the cost of having duplicate entries. But I don't love duplication. Thanks for your thoughts!

If someone is posting here and talking about an establishment that already exists, maybe you could make a best guess at who they are talking about and when they hit "post reply" you come back with an interim page that asks "are you talking about?" and then a list with checkboxes.

And then tag them in their vendor section.

Not easy to do I know. Just a thought.

Or implement tagging like facebook, and have the tag show up on the establishment's stream.

So if I started typing "@schnitz" ... I'd see options like Schnitzel Works and Schnitzel House (JIJ Beer Garden)

( sniff, yeah I still miss them ... )

zymurgist that is something I'd really like to implement as it's super useful on facebook. None of this would help the "new openings" situation but it would sure make our lives easier not having to look up the vendor number to put in brackets. [ [ v 427 ] ]

I think it would help because if tagging became easier more people would use it.

And you should list the tags in the feed for the establishment.