food subsite January 26, 2009 11:12 AM   Subscribe

I'm hungry for another subsite.

Prompted by this thread, itself inspired by this one, isn't it time for food.metafilter.com?

We have a subsite for music, one for jobs, and even one for fighting and whining. So what about a new one that can help us tap into that wealth of culinary skill that occasionally boils up into a fantastic pot of greasy goodness on AskMe or the blue?
posted by le morte de bea arthur to Feature Requests at 11:12 AM (63 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite

We should have a subsite just for pony requests. Why should they be mixed in with all the other MetaTalk bull shit? Get on it NOW, pb.
posted by gman at 11:15 AM on January 26, 2009


Meh - there's probably not enough traffic to warrant a subsite. Questions get funneled to ask, great databases or recipes to the blue. Subscribe to the RSS of the tags you're interested in, and it'd be almost the same thing.
posted by chrisamiller at 11:16 AM on January 26, 2009


See the EatMe page on the wiki.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:16 AM on January 26, 2009


Travel
posted by Plutor at 11:17 AM on January 26, 2009


Yeah, if travel died, why would food survive?
posted by GuyZero at 11:23 AM on January 26, 2009


GODDAMMIT BOOKFILTER OR NOTHING GODDAMN

I'd link to all the times I've whined about getting BooFi but activity search is not up yet so I won't devastate your argument for FeedMe with the force of my years-long whinefest for BooFi.

it could even include recipes and recipebooks and everyone would be happy

and yeah, I realize that years of whining don't actually hold up as argument, but, y'know...

WHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNE

posted by Kattullus at 11:23 AM on January 26, 2009 [14 favorites]


I am the Terence Stamp of Metafilter
posted by clavdivs at 11:24 AM on January 26, 2009


We should have a subsite just for pony requests.

PooFi?

posted by YoBananaBoy at 11:28 AM on January 26, 2009 [3 favorites]


Every good social networking site is about a verb and a noun. You want a site about books? Okay, do you want a site about , collecting books, or giving away books?

When sites fail, it's because either the verb or the noun is missing. Let's say I love diapers, so I sign up for the Huggies social network. I click around for a few minutes, see if any of my friends are on the network, and then forget about the site. It's not that it's a bad site; it's that there's no hook to keep me coming back to it.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:34 AM on January 26, 2009


Oops.

That was supposed to say "reading books," with a link to Goodreads.
posted by roll truck roll at 11:35 AM on January 26, 2009


It's not that it's a bad site; it's that there's no hook to keep me coming back to it.

We will require a mix of recipes and soul-crushing snark. Call it foodfight.metafilter.com.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:40 AM on January 26, 2009 [3 favorites]


We talked about it several times in the past, and I've always asked the question: What would a food.metafilter.com look like to you?

Some people want recipes, some want just questions from Ask MeFi, some want food blog type posts to interesting content, but there never seemed to be any consensus and we could never nail down what exactly a food site would cover.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 11:51 AM on January 26, 2009


What would a food.metafilter.com look like to you?

Beans, as far as the eye can see. Beans on plates.
posted by DU at 11:55 AM on January 26, 2009 [9 favorites]


What would a food.metafilter.com look like to you?

Ethnic food with a side order of travel.
posted by gman at 11:58 AM on January 26, 2009


This would be a subsite where I could browse pictures of hot dogs? Hm.
posted by Wolfdog at 12:08 PM on January 26, 2009


What would a food.metafilter.com look like to you?

Things we hate about the waiter that we had at lunch.
posted by Pants! at 12:09 PM on January 26, 2009


What would a food.metafilter.com look like to you?

Don't you mean shouldieatit.metafilter.com?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 12:09 PM on January 26, 2009 [2 favorites]


flambé.metafilter.com
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:11 PM on January 26, 2009


What would a food.metafilter.com look like to you?

The mayonnaise-laden tuna sandwich someone left on the counter for 4 days that their cat (who was being a dick at the time) already ate some of. Is it safe to eat and should the cat be brought to the vet?
posted by jerseygirl at 12:13 PM on January 26, 2009


clav!

I am the upside-down airplane stamp used to mail in a monthly garbage bill payment of metafilter.
posted by cortex (staff) at 12:17 PM on January 26, 2009


Food.Metafilter.Com could be sectioned along the major food axes:

Big / Small
Fancy / Plain
East / West
Hot / Cold

And all posts could be visualized as points on that grid!

(the major food axes were discovered by me, when I was hungry one time, but didn't know what kind of food I wanted. All restaurants can be divided into subsets using these categories. Try it!)
posted by Aquaman at 12:21 PM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


Whenever I lick the screen, it tastes the same. Is there a plug-in I will need?
posted by not_on_display at 12:31 PM on January 26, 2009 [2 favorites]


What would a food.metafilter.com look like to you?

Like a combination of Metafilter, AskMe and a recipe database: if you posted a thread, you'd have three choices as to the thread's "type": recipe, question or link. Question-threads would be just like AskMe threads, except the content would have to be food related (what's the best type of oil for cooking fish?); Link threads would be food-related Metafilter-like posts.

Recipe threads would be a new animal. They'd have a special form for entering each ingredient and another form for instructions. This would allow easy searches for food by ingredient. There should also be a rating system. Reply posts could either comment on the recipe or add improvements to it.

Naturally, all posts would be could be tagged and categorized in other ways. And perhaps recipe posts could have categories like low-cal, main course, vegan, appetizer, Chinese, etc. Recipes would have to be able to below to multiple categories.

The site should allow discussions of food preparation, food suggestions, dietary science and nutrition.
posted by grumblebee at 12:44 PM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


I get my all-food-all-the-time fetishes sated at chow.com and sister forums site chowhound.com, egullet.org, roadfood.com, etc. I come to Metafilter for the generality of content, not so I can see it be splintered off progressively into more subsites.
posted by jeeves at 12:53 PM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


Note, also, that Chowhound does pretty much everything that grumblebee mentioned above.
posted by jeeves at 12:54 PM on January 26, 2009


Separation and searchability of data is the subject here. How about people setting up sophisticated Mefi searching and categorization on other sites...to ameliorate the kinda, pretty, somewhat lame search capabilities of the native Mefi site.
posted by telstar at 12:55 PM on January 26, 2009


I love love love food, and generally answer food AskMes, and read food-related FPPs. But I don't really think this is necessary. Plus, I think there's a real benefit to food-related posts being mixed in so that everyone comments, rather than in some special site that will invariably be largely patronized by a subset of the membership of Metafilter.

And there are so, so many food-related communities on the internet -- why should we reinvent the wheel, especially when the wheel is already a gear in the machine, so to speak?

What I would like is a better way to automatically gather all kinds of specialized information to improve what is available currently via links manually posted in the Wiki. Food, books, stuff for sale by MeFites, etc. Maybe this could be accomplished through some tagging conventions, or maybe there's a fancier way to do it?
posted by desuetude at 12:56 PM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


Plus, it's a bit odd to me to have a subset here for a topic that is already appropriate for the other portions of MeFi. Jobs, music, and projects all arose because they didn't fit, since they're all sorta self-linky in nature.

(Not even getting into the issue of the copyright thing when people post recipes unattributed.)
posted by desuetude at 1:01 PM on January 26, 2009


Whether or not I support any additional subsite depends on whether or not a good nickname for it can be derived. Ask.Me? That's awesome. MeTa works just fine. But for a food subsite? What would the nickname be? FoodMe? FooMe? I'm not feeling it.
posted by Ms. Saint at 1:05 PM on January 26, 2009


GODDAMMIT BOOKFILTER OR NOTHING GODDAMN

A favorite for every beat of my heart.
posted by zoomorphic at 1:07 PM on January 26, 2009 [2 favorites]


A lot of newspapers say, Terence Stamp is playing himself and we're as bored as he is.
Terence Stamp

A lot of people only see me as villains.
Terence Stamp

A lot of young directors, they're not confident; they're not open to the emotional level of the scene.
Terence Stamp

All actors are incredibly insecure.
Terence Stamp

Although you have some films that are a real bummer, there's always a film that comes up where it's just heaven.
Terence Stamp

As a boy I believed I could make myself invisible. I'm not sure that I ever could, but I certainly had the ability to pass unnoticed.
Terence Stamp

At this point, it's either for fun or it's for money. I don't take movies that I don't really like.
Terence Stamp

From the very first movie I ever made to the current time, there have been times between action and cut when I've sensed some kind of new dimension that I haven't been familiar with before.
Terence Stamp

He's Soderbergh, we're working for him. It doesn't matter what he's doing; we'll see it at the premiere.
Terence Stamp

I have always had this energy, which I think of as overdrive.
Terence Stamp

I have to be stretched in some way. There's not enough things that come my way that I fancy.
Terence Stamp

I was very disappointed that so much of the work I did on The Haunted Mansion didn't arrive in the final cut.
Terence Stamp

I wasn't at all sure I could make that sort of leap into that sort of comic book reality.
Terence Stamp

I work primarily for the camera-it's not something I really talk about a lot, but it's part of the way I am as a movie actor. The camera is my girl, as it were.
Terence Stamp

I've been doing Tai Chi on and off for 20 years. The fundamentals of all martial arts are the same.
Terence Stamp

I've never wanted to become a politician, an interior decorator, I've never wanted to speculate and make a load of money. I just wanted this.
Terence Stamp

In my youth I dreamed of being an illustrator.
Terence Stamp

In the case of Elektra I really wasn't sure I could pull it off. There were so many intellectual leaps. My character, Stick, is blind, but he can see better than most people. So I had trouble kind of finding the logic.
Terence Stamp

It wasn't until I saw James Dean that I began to think that maybe I could actually do this. Movies didn't have to be just this fantasy with this impossibly handsome guy.
Terence Stamp

It's such a performance to bring stuff into America. It's a great luxury when I am in England.
Terence Stamp

My favorite film is Gene Tierney and Tyrone Power in The Razor's Edge.
Terence Stamp

My star was kind of fading towards the end of the '60s and suddenly I got this call from Fellini, who just appeared to kind of love me!
Terence Stamp

Peter Ustinov was the first really positive influence in my career. He was real and he bore witness to it. The things he said to you, he lived them.
Terence Stamp

Unless I try, I'm never really going to be at ease with myself.
Terence Stamp

What I wanted more than anything was a long career.
Terence Stamp

-for cortex
who understands the insanity
posted by clavdivs at 1:08 PM on January 26, 2009


But for a food subsite? What would the nickname be? FoodMe? FooMe?

Eat... uh, nevermind.
posted by jerseygirl at 1:08 PM on January 26, 2009 [2 favorites]


"pfui"

-Nero Wolfe
posted by clavdivs at 1:25 PM on January 26, 2009


DU: "What would a food.metafilter.com look like to you?

Beans, as far as the eye can see. Beans on plates.
"

Do you like beans? Do you like George Wendt? Do you eat beans with George Wendt? Do you eat beans at George Wendt movies? Would you like to see George Wendt in a bean-eating movie?
posted by IndigoRain at 2:19 PM on January 26, 2009 [3 favorites]


Perhaps more to the point, would you eat beans while reading food.metafilter.com with George Wendt?
posted by IndigoRain at 2:23 PM on January 26, 2009


Could we have a subsite just for things that I'm interested in?
posted by turgid dahlia at 2:37 PM on January 26, 2009


It would be plum colored and be a combination of recipes, restaurant reviews, links to food sites and interesting foodie blogs, and essays by foodies. Then the food and drink questions from AskMe funneled in on a sidebar where clicking on the comment link would take you to the AskMe question in the green.
posted by FunkyHelix at 3:21 PM on January 26, 2009


SeriousEats does this for me.
posted by Night_owl at 3:26 PM on January 26, 2009


We should have a subsite just for pony requests.

wcitymike.metafilter.com?
posted by special-k at 4:09 PM on January 26, 2009


callouts.metafilter.com, you bastards!
posted by PeterMcDermott at 4:32 PM on January 26, 2009


long.involved.probably.fictional.relationship.questions.metafilter.com
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 4:42 PM on January 26, 2009


GODDAMMIT BOOKFILTER OR NOTHING GODDAMN

Its not bookFilter, but an incredible imitation: BookFilterMania
posted by shothotbot at 4:42 PM on January 26, 2009


What desuetude said is basically exactly how I feel. I am a person who loves reading about food and talking about food and dining, with the people inside the computer -- but I have loads of places to do that already. Food is one topic that the internet loves to curate, above most others.

Plus, I am gunshy since travel.metafilter.com. I was absolutely convinced that it would vastly improve my MeFi experience -- and that, being a frequent flyer, I would use it near daily. Instead, it ended up not really being functional for me in any of the ways I'd hoped. (Fairly, that could be blamed on the soft launch or lack of traffic. But, I feel like even despite the soft launch, I was able to see firsthand why I wouldn't really use TravFi even once it was fully functional: once it actually came to pass, it didn't actually meet a need.)

This isn't about the travel site, per se. But it is about being able to see that an idea can sound fabulous on paper... while still realizing that it won't necessarily be All That in execution.
posted by pineapple at 5:07 PM on January 26, 2009


Adding to IRFH's suggestion above, shouldieatit.metafilter.com should be a single serving site that looks like this:
--------------------------------------
|                                    | 
|                                    | 
|                                    | 
|               YES!                 | 
|                                    | 
|                                    | 
|                                    | 
|                                    | 
--------------------------------------
posted by chrisamiller at 6:03 PM on January 26, 2009 [2 favorites]


a few simple redirects would also take care of

shouldiDTMFA.metafilter.com

or

doineedalawyer.metafilter.com
posted by chrisamiller at 6:07 PM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]


alt.canieatthis
posted by not_on_display at 6:31 PM on January 26, 2009


If you do what grumblebee suggests, then I will fly all the way out there to the west coast and kiss you on the mouth if you buy me the plane ticket and maybe a beer when I get there and if you don't have any cold sores or anything.
posted by middleclasstool at 7:03 PM on January 26, 2009


DrugMe
posted by Meatbomb at 8:20 PM on January 26, 2009


Things we hate about the waiter that we had at lunch.

Like buttons. Buttons and zippers. Buttons and zippers and belt buckles. Maybe shoe laces. Buttons and zippers and belt buckles and shoe laces. Everything else tasted fine.
posted by netbros at 8:23 PM on January 26, 2009


Politics.metafilter.com first.
posted by LarryC at 8:31 PM on January 26, 2009


I would love food.metafilter.com. Interest in politics waxes and wanes but you gotta eat.
Sometimes it is hard to pull the actual recipe from the ask food threads and you cant be sure of quality.

You could make it like projects. People vote for recipes if they prepare them and like them. Have a standard template for uploading recipes, east to print format, shopping lists as well as ingredient list. Categorize and tag them it could become a great resource.....the people of metafilter seem to know food and love food.

1 - food.metafilter.com
2 - book of meficipes
3 - profit

Please..
posted by therubettes at 3:59 AM on January 27, 2009


I should make it clear that I think food.metafilter.com should just contain recipes so maybe recipes.metafilter.com
posted by therubettes at 4:02 AM on January 27, 2009


In response to the "it's elsewhere, we don't need to reinvent the wheel here" line of thinking, well, yes, there are other online communities out there, and they are centered on food. The thing is, I'm not a part of those, and I'd much rather spend my time with this particular community. I'd rather not try to find my way around a community, or lurk there, if, here, where there are people I've gotten to know a bit, whom I know happen to have some really good ideas for food, we could have foodfi(ght).

I like you guys, I like hanging out here, and, well, if I could get all my goodness in one place, that would be swell.

By the way, I think there should be more than just recipes. Posts could include particularly nice restaurant experiences, questions about how exactly to make that one thing, recipes, challenges (like, say, the chilli cook-off), and, well, posts about food. It'd be swell.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:40 AM on January 27, 2009 [1 favorite]


Food.Metafilter.Com could be sectioned along the major food axes:

Big / Small
Fancy / Plain
East / West
Hot / Cold

And all posts could be visualized as points on that grid!

(the major food axes were discovered by me, when I was hungry one time, but didn't know what kind of food I wanted. All restaurants can be divided into subsets using these categories. Try it!)


Are you privy to some super-secret display technology? The mental image I got from this post was that you wanted some kind of 4-D grid. Such a thing may be difficult to render on the majority of current computer displays.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 7:01 AM on January 27, 2009


I like you guys, I like hanging out here, and, well, if I could get all my goodness in one place, that would be swell.

By the way, I think there should be more than just recipes. Posts could include particularly nice restaurant experiences, questions about how exactly to make that one thing, recipes, challenges (like, say, the chilli cook-off), and, well, posts about food. It'd be swell.


But...you already have this. There are tons of food-related FPPs, and most of the content you seek is legit for AskMe (to which you can add relevant categories and tags for the MyAsk tab. Hey, people who want content-related filtering...remember the MyAsk tab?)

(Not intending to single you out Ghidorah -- your comment echos others upthread.)
posted by desuetude at 8:06 AM on January 27, 2009 [1 favorite]


Every topic that gets play on AskMe is a topic that some demographic wants broken into a Metafilter subsite.

And what Metafilter is better at doing is combining rather than segregating. The blue is about all topics, the green is about all topics; their service is in how they handle the topics. The grey is about discussing what goes on in other parts of the site. Jobs is not intended for any specific kind of job.

Music and Travel break this pattern, although I'd argue Music is more of an edge case. And Travel has become unnecessary now that you can filter AskMe by topic yourself.

Creating subsites should be done with an eye towards new means of handling a breadth of subject matter rather than a subset.
posted by ardgedee at 8:16 AM on January 27, 2009


I also lack enthusiasm for a food subsite; I just don't see the need, since "what should I make," "where should I eat," "should I eat this?" et al. are already allowed and available in the green.
posted by rtha at 8:34 AM on January 27, 2009


Music and Travel break this pattern, although I'd argue Music is more of an edge case. And Travel has become unnecessary now that you can filter AskMe by topic yourself.

I still believe that the Trip Reports aspect of Travel was unique and interesting in and of itself. I sort of imagined Travel as having two types of write-ups:
1) Trip Report from a visitor
2) Guides written by someone who lives there

and all of these would be organized so as to be easily searchable.

The problem with Travel as it rolled out was that it was over-thought to begin with. It sort of broke the design rule of start simple and lets-see-how-people-use-it (like Mefi Music did) and instead opted for lets-make-a-convoluted-set-of-features that we have decided make sense. In that sense, it was doomed to be DOA.
posted by vacapinta at 8:55 AM on January 27, 2009 [1 favorite]


Why not just use the tags for food, recipes, cooking, etc.?
posted by Jaltcoh at 9:44 AM on January 27, 2009


I think the main reason I'd like to see foodfi is that we could share, rather than answer. Posting recipes to Metafilter is, by rules, a reactionary thing. Someone asks a question, and, as an answer, you can post it.

What I'd like to see is maybe a recipe filter. A place where we can go, "ooh, look what I made last night" or "I had this at X restaurant, and you should give it a try if you're in town" in addition to questions about cooking.

I know my pony is unlikely, but I still want him. I'll take good care of him, brush him every day, and never, ever eat him raw, sliced thinly, and dipped in soy sauce and garlic pulp.
posted by Ghidorah at 5:49 PM on January 27, 2009


Are you privy to some super-secret display technology? The mental image I got from this post was that you wanted some kind of 4-D grid. Such a thing may be difficult to render on the majority of current computer displays.

Hey, it works just fine in my brain!

Seriously, though, give it a try next time you're at a loss for what to eat. Sushi is Small/Fancy/East/Cold. Burritos are Big/Plain/West/Hot, Curry is Big/Plain/East/Hot, and so forth.
posted by Aquaman at 6:20 PM on January 29, 2009


Hey, it works just fine in my brain!

Seriously, though, give it a try next time you're at a loss for what to eat. Sushi is Small/Fancy/East/Cold. Burritos are Big/Plain/West/Hot, Curry is Big/Plain/East/Hot, and so forth.


Wasn't really trying to rip on you there, on re-reading it, I sound like a dick, but that wasn't what I was going for. I wanted to say "That would be AWESOME", but got distracted...
posted by ArgentCorvid at 7:43 PM on January 29, 2009


Shouldieatit.metafilter.com should have a one word answer, but it should base that answer on your Contribution Index. The new section will pay for itself in the number of usernames it frees up.
posted by mccarty.tim at 9:21 AM on February 17, 2009


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