This site has gone way downhill

[dawgs142]

As soon as u make people sign in to either post or answer questions its too much of a pain they really need to figure out a better way... Any thoughts on that

[mielimato]

I think it is important to have people sign in. I know so many people who write fake reviews for new restaurants/events just to create hype. I like that with chowhound I can see people's usernames and can keep track of specific people that I like and whose opinion I respect.

[JMF]

I agree. And the amount of nasty posts and flames seems to have gone down.

[meatme]

Registration also helps ensure that when you see a post under a user's name it was actually that user who posted it.

[mark]

i, for one, used to spend a great deal of time on posts. now, however, due to the new site and the way i use it (surfing in and out during the day while at work), i find myself actively participating far less than i used to. to post now, i first have to change security settings then log in, then post, then log out and switch my settings back; tedious to say the least. so, for me at least, the site is far less usable. i would be thrilled if we could post, even it's anonymous, without logging in.

[xavier]

The horror, the horror. I'm really astounded that people find registration such a hardship. I can't think of a single other message board/community/whatever that I've been to in recent years that doesn't require some sort of registration. Hell, under the old method you had to fill out a name every time you posted; this way you can program it to remember you.

The good news is that not too many people seem to feel this way. The Manhattan board, which is where I hang out, seems quite active.

[Ike]

Agreed.

The great NYC-area radio station, WFMU, has, for some reason or other, so far refused to require registration for its web site's message board. As a result, that board gets hit with massive amounts of spam at all hours. A moderator has to go through and manually delete it frequently.

I also think Mielimato makes an excellent point below -- you can really really trust in the reviews now, if they're by a regular user (or even just vaguely semi-regular user) whom you can track and whose opinions you can compare against your own. I used to just judge posts' chow-reliability by their writing style, and whether or not they seemed willing to put any real criticism into their reviews (but not everybody is good with evaluating writing styles, etc.). I don't think I saw much shilling or many fake reviews, but I'm sure that couldn't have lasted. We'd get heaps o' shills here sooner or later if there weren't required registration.

Also, on the old chowhound board, I couldn't decide on an exact permutation of my name, and used various permutations. On the new board, it's fixed as "Ike" and automatically logs me in.

Mark, sounds like you need to fiddle with those settings. IMO, you need to get Mozilla Firefox and put Chowhound.com on your cookies whitelist/security whitelist or whatever.

[julesrules]

The Toronto board seems way *more* active, and people are also bumping up old threads to make new comments and report back on people's suggestions. I love it. No complaints here.

[Pan]

It's no big deal to register and sign in. If that's enough to discourage people from posting, I have to wonder how much effort they would have put into posting, in the first place.

[janethepain]

you can make it remember you and automatically log in every time you visit the page.

[prunefeet]

Well, I felt this way for a bit, but now I'm used to it, and I think it's worth it. I love having my "my chow" page to refer to, and being able to bookmark..maybe you could do that before, but I wasn't aware of it then...