why censor posts that a restaurant is closed?

[Robert Lauriston]

Hey moderators: discussions about health code violations might usually be off-topic, but when the local health department closes a restaurant, that's not off-topic.

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/432374

[Servorg]

Of course there is always the old "end run" play in which some creative hound posts about the issue on Site and links back to thread about the restaurant on their local board, so that both pieces of information can now dovetail...and voilà! ;-D>

[Td61]

Heavy handed, IMO.

[Robert Lauriston]

A moderator posted in that topic that it's OK to post that a restaurant was closed by the health department but not to include the details of why.

Anybody who wants to know can just Google <restaurant name> health department so who cares?

[The Chowhound Team]

And we encourage them to do that. We're not trying to stop people from finding the information. The problem is that while the Health Department will update their records when the business re-opens and passes future inspections, Chowhound threads don't get updated, and thus the outdated information about their health department problems ends up showing up in Google as if nothing has changed. We think it's really important that information about health code violations be accurate, complete and up-to-date, and Chowhound's coverage can't be all of those things, so it's better that people turn to the actual Health Department for this kind of information.