Is it time for a forum to house recipes?

Anne Miller suggested I post this topic in this forum so people could vote on it. I've copied and pasted my question to Anne and then edited it for this forum.

Hello Anne,

I'm writing to you because you are the Forum Leader for Cooking. I'm relatively new here but I do root around a lot. I recently posted in Kitchen in the "quarts vs quarts vs cups" thread, and at that same time posted a recipe that I hoped would prove my point.  That got me thinking that there is no central location for recipes in Permies.com. (If there is, please point me to it.) I can appreciate that it's not a central theme for all y'all, but it is one of the results of all that you do "in here."

There are a few other reasons to have recipes centrally located.
One, you sell a lot of merchandise and there is no reason why a cookbook couldn't join that list.
Two, it's a way for people to share something else that they do and engages your audiences in a different way.
Three, everyone eats better.  
Four, it could also include recipes for homemade cleaners or other items of interest.

I've organized my recipes into nine folders called Appetizers, Bread, Dressing/Salad/Sauce/Soup, Herbs/Spices, Homemade Cleaners, Pasta & Rice, Savory, Sweet, Vegetables/Vegetarian/Vegan. Within every folder, I've started each recipe with the name of the main ingredient. So for example under Savory dishes there are the following sub-folders: Beef, Bison, Chicken, Egg, Fish, Lamb, Pork, Tofu, Turkey, or Venison recipes get clumped together. When a dish's primary ingredient is Egg or Tofu and is not vegetarian, there is a folder under Savory for it too.  I have 161 recipes under Savory and this is a really good way to sort them.

Anyway, please consider creating a forum (or whatever) under Kitchen (or wherever) so that this valuable resource is not lost or scattered over all the forums. Would it be impossible to search and identify all the recipes that currently reside in forums as a response to a question? If you need help, I am prepared to assist.  

Thanks for listening,
Barbara Manning

You asked this same question Aug 12, 2021 and I see this has been answered Here:

https://permies.com/t/165630/time-recipes-forum-forum

To make a new forum, we need the threads made first (for complicated reasons).  We need at least 50 threads to get started.  

Make a list of 50 recipes in this thread to get the ball rolling.

I think something that is aligned with what alan booker is doing with his permaculture kitchen course could be interesting.  Cooking with the seasons.  

Another thing along these lines: recipes featuring wild crafted foods.  ??

Thanks, Anne and Paul,  I used the My Posts sort under my name but didn't come up with the thread you pointed me to.  So thanks for that.

So I guess that inertia wins -- not too many people are interested in adding tags or flags to a recipe, or otherwise determining how to collect the vast majority of recipes into one ah, space, for lack of a better term.

I'm ok with that. If there is no interest in organizing the data, then that's the end of the issue.

Anne, my apologies for not being able to find my own original post. Thanks for setting me straight.

Barbara, it looks like you have a passion for this subject, and I think that is fantastic!

If you can find/make 50 recipe threads (not all of them will need to be new, we probably already have 50 of them already), then we can make the forum!

Just post links to each thread down below and we can push the buttons to make this happen!

Here's some examples of when people made forums happen that they wanted:
- Keto Forum
- Sewing
- Camera Work
- Computing
- Pollinators

(In each of the above threads, you'll see their lists of threads to create the forum)

I hope that helps!

Do you mean like this?
https://permies.com/t/192039/kitchen/Share-pumpkin-recipes

Yep, just like that! Once we have 50 thread links like that, we'll make the forum!

OK!  I'll get going and list 50 different places where there is a recipe.  Then I'll post all 50 in one post.  Thanks! Barbara

All righty.  Here are 50 posts with recipes. Some of the posts are with multiple recipes.  I've included a subset of recipes for soap making because they are recipes first, and nonedible second. Those folks also would like a fourm and perhaps you can find a way to have a recipes forum that includes soaps, cleaners, and other nonedibles. Your opinion may be different and that's ok.  I haven't been able to find my own recipe for easter soup but I don't know the search engine well enough to know if my query is wrong.

Anyway, tell me if I'm tracking correctly or if not, what I'm doing wrong.  Thanks for the opportunity.

P.S. There's more to search. This is just what I found in a few hours of searching on the word "recipes".

Permies Recipes
Search for recipe: https://permies.com/forums/jforum
1. https://permies.com/t/208835/kitchen/good-Pasta-Salad-recipe
2. https://permies.com/t/192039/kitchen/Share-pumpkin-recipes
3. https://permies.com/t/204730/kitchen/Bread-pudding-ultimate-dish
4. https://permies.com/t/137332/kitchen/Eggs-Pancakes-Baked-Goods
5. https://permies.com/t/83787/kitchen/Equivalents
6. https://permies.com/t/40/97393/Faggots-retards-volunteer-moderators#850791
7. https://permies.com/t/53160/kitchen/Cooking-Dry-Beans-Peas
8. https://permies.com/t/98634/kitchen/Real-Fast-Food-Challenge-Minute
9. https://permies.com/t/46956/kitchen/vegan-friend-visited-today
10. https://permies.com/wiki/101824/pep-community/Prepare-clean-basic-meal-people
11. https://permies.com/t/53160/kitchen/Cooking-Dry-Beans-Peas
12. https://permies.com/t/179284/Eating-fresh-beans-drying
13. https://permies.com/t/41062/kitchen/Tortillas-easy
14. https://permies.com/t/39374/kitchen/Kidney-Bean-Sourdough
15. https://permies.com/t/171816/kitchen/Garbanzo-Flour
16. https://permies.com/t/40/97393/Faggots-retards-volunteer-moderators#850791 (video)
17. https://permies.com/t/171990/kitchen/Beans-bread
18. https://permies.com/t/150045/Eating-bean-leaves
19. https://permies.com/t/1371/kitchen/Poly-Dough-pizza-bread-fry#8292
20. https://permies.com/wiki/102815/pep-food-prep-preservation/loaves-bread-PEP-BB-food Multiple recipes on the link. There are 12 pages of posts.
21. https://permies.com/wiki/103081/pep-food-prep-preservation/Bake-pizza-PEP-BB-food
22. https://permies.com/t/93892/kitchen/York-style-pizza-sauce-crust
23. https://permies.com/t/93571/kitchen/Hot-Italian-Sausage-recipe
24. https://permies.com/t/93692/kitchen/Cauliflower-Pizza-Crust
25. https://permies.com/t/74524/kitchen/Gluten-Free-Pizza-Crust
26. https://permies.com/t/12362/kitchen/Grain-free-dairy-free-soy
27. https://permies.com/wiki/150189/pep-food-prep-preservation/Bake-food-straw-bakesix-PEP -- does this count as six recipes?
28. https://permies.com/t/204818/kitchen/Difference-Scalloped-Au-Gratin-Potatoes
29. https://permies.com/t/177329/kitchen/Boiling-pork-fat-Making-Lard#1393343
30. https://permies.com/t/197028/kitchen/Pork-Chop-Favorites 5 recipes
31. https://permies.com/t/194346/kitchen/Tomatillos-recipes 3 maybe 4 recipes
32. https://permies.com/t/193168/kitchen/winter-squash-molasses
33. https://permies.com/t/168221/kitchen/Staple-recipes-needed-luxury-item for those that have an abundance of shrimp
34. https://permies.com/t/66513/cherries/Drying-Cherries
35. https://permies.com/t/193497/kitchen/green-tomatoes
36. https://permies.com/t/97222/kitchen/ISO-easy-cracker-recipes-grain

The following links are from this post: https://permies.com/t/124771/Soap-Making-forum
37. https://permies.com/t/117228/permaculture-home-care-cleaning/purity/Grease-cutting-lard-soap-borax
38. https://permies.com/t/48586/Soap-making-oils-choose
39. https://permies.com/t/edible-clean
40. https://permies.com/t/6030/soap-making
41. https://permies.com/t/34143/Simple-Soap-Making-Options-Lye
42. https://permies.com/t/6224/cheap-laundry-soap-recipe
43. https://permies.com/t/936/soap
44. https://permies.com/t/59824/personal-care/purity/natural-soaps-lather
45. https://permies.com/t/124792/personal-care/purity/Making-shampoo-bars
46. https://permies.com/t/116617/rancid-lard
47. https://permies.com/t/131271/kitchen/Rendering-Fats
You may not want to count these, as the links in the post are to outside sources
48. https://permies.com/t/171990/kitchen/Beans-bread https://permies.com/t/70968/type-tacos-Gir-Bot
49. https://alumni.cornell.edu/cornellians/classic-cornell-bread/
50. https://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Ezekiel-4-9/

At last!  I found it.  Bonus recipe for Easter Soup: https://permies.com/t/161283/kitchen/quarts-quarts-cups  

If any of these posts are non-qualifying, let me know. This is just the start of my permies site research.

Cheers,
Barbara

That's a great list.

Here are some questions we ask when considering new forums: https://permies.com/wiki/160660/forum#1258102

Thanks, R. Ranson,

Here's my responses to your questions:
Questions:
1. do we have a forum that already does this job?
Not really. There is no single forum or subject within a forum that captures in one location, all the recipes that are sprinkled throughout the site. It could be placed in the Kitchen forum, but I'd like it to be its own subject in the Kitchen Forum, called Recipes. There is one called Cooking but it's too general I think.  If there was a subject called Recipes, its name is 1. self-explanatory and 2. can include recipes for nonedibles like the soaps, detergents, and cleaners I found.
2. do we have a forum that could accommodate this subject with just a little bit of tweaking?
Ah, yup. See 1 above
3. do we have enough content to fill the new forum (not yet) and enough interest to keep it active?  On the flip side, would filling up the new forum empty the old?
I'm a newbie in Permies, but I see a lot of shared recipes in many of the forums, but they are difficult to find without knowing the precise word(s) to search for.  So, yeah, you have the content, and if nothing else, you will continue to have recipes posted by people earning  PEP badges. I think it was the rocket oven Pep badge that asked people for 6 recipes using the oven to earn a badge.  And, we can avoid "emptying the old forum" if we make Recipes a subject within the Kitchen forum, and flag (I believe you call it a boost the original post so that it would be included in the new Recipes subject under the Kitchen forum. My thinking here is that posters can still post recipes in the relevant conversation anywhere but also flag/boost the post so that it also appears in the new Recipes subject. Of course, this assumes that boosting a post actually jibes with my description of it here. If you can show me how to search all new posts, and how to flag/boost a post then I can scan new posts on a daily or weekly basis, and flag/boost any new recipes I find.
4. does it match the goals of this site?
If by this you mean the goal of sharing as much info as possible with the greatest number of people then, yeah, it matches that goal, IMHO. And no, if boosting the post to the new Recipe subject has some horrible nightmarish implication for site management.


What do we need to build the forum?
a. a name - preferably one word that describes everything I think Recipes covers it broadly enough to cover edible and nonedible recipes. In addition, it doesn't take away from the manner in which the term recipe is used by Paul Wheaton, for example
b. a volunteer staff member to do the work (it takes about 20-40 hours) that would be me. But I certainly hope that I won't be working 40 hours a week on this project 6 months from now. I get that it'll still be my baby to care for, I just hope all the initial hoopla doesn't last longer than that.
c. a thread introducing the forum that we can link to at the top of the forum that would be me, too
d. some words to put at the top of the forum to describe it. that would be me, too. Although introducing the forum and describing it is practically the same
e. at least 50, but preferably 100 threads that would populate the new forum If you're willing to accept nonedibles into the Recipe category, then yeah, I think we have it. I spent maybe 3 hours max finding the 50 threads that have at least one recipe contained in the thread -- many of them have multiple recipes.

Fulfilling all of the above doesn't guarantee the new forum will happen.  But it's a good first step.   I understand.

My main question is, if we have a recipe forum, what will the Cooking forum contain? What about the Vegan and Keto forums?

I just took a quick look at the vegan forum. There's only 3 pages worth of threads in there. About 1/3rd to 1/4th of the threads in there seem to be recipes. Pretty much anything beyond recipes and cooking assistance ends up in the Cider Press because people start arguing.

Looking at the Keto and Paleo forum (both of which only have 2 pages of results), about 1/5 of those threads seem to be recipe threads.

Cooking, however, does have 38 pages worth of results! Maybe we could leave the Keto, Paleo, Cheese, and Vegan recipe threads with Keto (or vegan, etc) as the Primary forum, and make Recipe the Secondary forum?

Then for all the miscellaneous recipe threads that are in the Cooking forum, we make those have Recipe as their Primary forum, and Cooking (and whatever else might apply) as their Secondary forum? This should leave the cooking forum with enough threads, while still preserving enough threads in the Vegan, Keto, Paleo, etc forums.

(Note on Primary and Secondary forums. Primary forums are where the thread is listed first, and the forum name that's listed when you look at Recent Topics. But, if you go to one of it's secondary forums, you'll see it indexed there. We want to make sure that each forum has enough threads that list it as their Primary, because Google likes that. Anyone with PIE can add each thread to up to 2 more forums--which is great for indexing things!)

I love having more organization, and think it's great to make it easier to find things. It sounds like the Recipe forum might help with that. I just want to make sure it doesn't end up emptying other forums of their primary threads!

Thanks, Nicole,

I also don't want to jeopardize the content in any other forums or threads. I just want a single source for all the recipes available on Permies.com. I think having a Recipes subject within the Kitchen Forum would accomplish that. If the Boost function operates the way I described, all the forums and subjects remain intact, while a link (or whatever) is posted to the Recipes subject within the Kitchen forum.  I have no interest in deleting or abandoning other forums of subjects.

If you scroll through the posts on the Cooking subject, you can see that it's about way more than recipes. Yeah, there are some recipes in there, but it's mostly about ingredient use and other food-related issues -- but not recipes.

Barbara Manning wrote: I think having a Recipes subject within the Kitchen Forum would accomplish that. If the Boost function operates the way I described, all the forums and subjects remain intact, while a link (or whatever) is posted to the Recipes subject within the Kitchen forum.  I have no interest in deleting or abandoning other forums of subjects.  

I'm a bit confused about terminology (it wasn't until I became a moderator that I understood some of these things, so I can understand the confusion!) To try and ease communication, I'm going to define terms so we're both on the same page.

I see three important terms that you used in your post: Forum, Subject, Boost. I'm going to go through them one by one to make sure we're speaking the same language!

Forums:
Permies has Categories and Forums. The big things, like Growies, Critters, Monies, etc are all Catagories.

One thing that helps me remember this is their URLs. Here's the Kitchen category's url: https://permies.com/forums/c/kitchen. See how it has a little "C" in there after forums? That C stands for Category!

Inside each Category, there are forums, like keto, vegan, and fermentation.

If we look at at Cooking, it's URL looks like this: https://permies.com/f/17/cooking. See the little "F" in there? That F stands for Forum!

Subject
The only meaning I have for "Subject" is the title of a thread, like this thread's subject is called "Is it time for a forum to house recipes?"

Boost
Thread Boost is a way for people to pay to get their thread seen more by others. (More about thread boost here). You can click the Thread Boost button on any thread just to look at the options. But, there's no option there to change a thread's subject/title. You can pay to add it to more forums....but that's often a lot more affordable to do by just buying pie. You could also add flags to a thread. Honestly, I've never noticed that flags do much for a thread--I think most people ignore them, or don't even notice them.

---

When I read what you wrote, I'm not sure if we're using the same meaning for subject? Do you mean the title of each thread, or the name of a forum?

We staff are not allowed to edit people's posts. Rarely, we will edit the subject title of a thread, either to make it less prone to causing arguments, or to remove EXCESS AMOUNTS OF CAPITALS, which most people find annoying . Other than that, we don't mess with them.

To change the subject title of each thread to say RECIPE at the beginning would be a lot of work, and it might tick off people who didn't want that in their subject title. It would also be a lot of work and an on-going project, and I'm pretty sure Paul wouldn't want to pay our awesome software developer to do that, especially when there are a ton more important things we'd like the amazing programmer to do, like improve the mobile view. He's got a ton on his plate!

So, as far as I can see, changing the subject title of each recipe thread is not something we can feasibly do.

I think the best tool we have is to make a new forum, named Recipes, in the Kitchen forum that. We can try to make sure every recipe thread has that forum as either it's Primary or Secondary forum. That way, when someone visits the Recipes forum, they'd see all the recipes!

Nice start!

A couple of thoughts:

#6 and #16 don't belong in a recipe forum. Whole threads would be included in the forum, not just individual posts in a thread.

When I see the kitchen category, I personally expect edible recipes. For cleaning supplies, soap, and detergent recipes, I would look under the home care category.

The volunteer to do the work would have to be someone at the staff level.

But we aren't there yet.  There are a lot more details to work out.  

Part of me likes the idea.  Part of me feels we've done this before and it was an absolute failure and took a lot of work to undo.  


Let me delve into the hidden histories to check somethings, then I'll write more.

To start with, I'm still having trouble understanding how we differentiate between a thread with a recipe in it and a recipe thread.  

Because if we go with the first, then it's going to empty almost half a dozen forums and make one huge forum that isn't going to be much fun to find anything in it.

If we go with the latter then we need to set up strict rules for interacting with that forum to keep it useful - and there won't be much content in that forum.  Both of which are fast paths to the death of the forum.  

So, consider a new forum.  We start with looking at what we already got.

Looking at the kitchen category: https://permies.com/c/kitchen

Food preservation has a description and some links to relevant threads at the top:
https://permies.com/f/97/food-preservation


Before we go anywhere else, we need to finish off the Kitchen Category as it is and get each forum a short description and three links to relevant threads at the top.  This would give us a better idea of what each forum is really about (I don't even know what a paleo or a keto is or how to cook it)  

(hint, this is what Paul asked me do when I wanted to dig the dead recipe forum out of one of the other categories and make a glorious Kitchen Category - basically I had to show I wanted it enough to put in the work fixing other things first)

r ranson wrote:To start with, I'm still having trouble understanding how we differentiate between a thread with a recipe in it and a recipe thread.    

There's always some grey areas in the forums... I think if it's just one recipe in a thread then it shouldn't be in a recipe forum: so if a recipe for soup was posted in a 'what to do with scrappy veg' thread then that wouldn't be in recipes just in frugailty (and zero waste maybe) but a thread on how to make vegetable soup would be a recipe thread. The problem is that we would then end up with orphan recipes dotted around the site, not in the recipe forum.

I often see threads start out as just sharing a recipe, then develop into a long conversation.

So would these threads start in recipe and then need to be moved later?  This is one of the things we looked at when naming the new forums and after 16 months of discussion, we came up with "cooking"

*takes a deep breath, realizing this means she is probably volunteering...*

So if the fora already are the Permies cookbook, then it sounds to me like what we need is a perpetually-updated index of all recipes on Permies pinned to the top of the Kitchen category. Perhaps something like a Wikipage, carefully brooded over and updated every day or two, that was an index of both threads and posts which contain recipes. It could be arranged topically, and then searched by Users (with "ctrl + f") for particular words, and each name in the index would lead to a link with the recipe(s) in it.  Just maybe 1) all of the desires for accessing the recipes here might be able to be met and 2) also the pitfalls mentioned above be avoided in doing this.

We do have a 'review grid' feature.

It makes a page like this https://permies.com/w/book-reviews

We have to manually add the thread and the system knows to put it on the grid if it

a) has a post at the top about the thing
b) has posts later in that thread that begin with "I give this ... X out of 10 acorns"

Some more examples:
https://permies.com/wiki/gear-reviews
https://permies.com/wiki/video-reviews
https://permies.com/wiki/seed-reviews

And an example of the discussion leading up to one of these grids
https://permies.com/t/76161/Seed-Company-Review-Grid


We know that although these grids take a lot of human input, they are maintainable over time.

The main errors are...
.,.. people don't follow the format of the first post an overview, then a follow up post with the review
.... people don't follow the format of "I give this .... X out of 10 acorns"


A recipe review grid might do the trick if it could follow the same format as the other review grids.

Wow! That's a lot of information. Thanks, everyone for your time and energy spent on this topic.

Nicole, thanks for that explanation. It's very handy.  Let me repeat it back to you so I'm sure I understand.  The category is the highest level. Within Category, there are Forums.  Within Forums, there are specific topics, called Subjects. You cannot post a Subject directly to a Category, posters much choose a Forum within a Category to submit a Subject.

And yes, you are correct, I had reversed the definitions of Category and Forum and confused everyone by calling a Forum a Subject. And I didn't fully understand how the term Boost was used, but I do now. What I should have used was the word, link -- exactly like all the links in my original list.
So, to be accurate the hierarchy is
1. Category
 2. Forum
   3. Subject
When I wrote this under my response to question #3, I would have more accurately reflected the hierarchy by saying:
And, we can avoid "emptying the old forum" if we make Recipes a subject forum within the Kitchen forum category, and flag (I believe you call it a boost the original post so that it would be included in the new Recipes subjectforum under the Kitchen forumcategory.

If what I'm proposing here is not the elegant solution I think it is, is there some other way to indicate where actual recipes reside and provide readers with a list or index so that they can find those recipes?  Perhaps this is simply a good idea whose time hasn't come or has already passed?  It could also be a bad or just ma-ma idea. Am I the only one clamoring for a way to locate all the recipes available on the site? Am I suggesting using a hammer to kill a flea?

Nikki Roche also makes a good point when she said; "Whole threads would be included in the forum, not just individual posts in a thread."  Since I had to scroll to find some of those recipes, perhaps linking the thread to a Recipe index (or something like it -- I'm envisioning a list of links, like the one I submitted that started this discussion) is a more reasonable idea.

R. Ranson and Nancy Reading also make valid points. Maybe all I've been able to do here is get R. Ranson to make the point that the Kitchen Category should be tidied up before trying to make other enhancements to the category. I can help with that if it is an outcome of this discussion.  I'm also leaning toward Rachel Lindsay's suggestion that "what we need is a perpetually-updated index of all recipes on Permies.", coupled with R. Ranson's concept of a review grid. At least I've started on it with the list of 50.

Again, thanks for your thoughts, suggestions, comments, and education. Whatever you decide, I know it will be in the best interest of the Permies site.

Barbara Manning wrote:Wow! That's a lot of information. Thanks, everyone for your time and energy spent on this topic.

Nicole, thanks for that explanation. It's very handy.  Let me repeat it back to you so I'm sure I understand.  The category is the highest level. Within Category, there are Forums.  Within Forums, there are specific topics, called Subjects. You cannot post a Subject directly to a Category, posters much choose a Forum within a Category to submit a Subject.

Close, very close!!! I'll paste it down below with the slightly changed verbiage:

 The category is the highest level. Within Category, there are Forums.  Within Forums, there are specific topics, called Threads (or Topics). Each Thread/Topic has a Subject/title heading, just like emails have a subject heading. You cannot post a Thread directly to a Category, posters much choose a Forum within a Category to submit a Thread

Barbara Manning wrote:and flag (I believe you call it a boost the original post so that it would be included in the new Recipes subjectforum under the Kitchen forumcategory.

Ooooooh! By flag, you mean "add to forum"! Anyone who has PIE can add a thread to up to three total forums. (If it's already in three forums, you can't add it to more. Staff members can add things to something like 5 or 6 forums, I think).

The drop-down menu looks something like this on Desktop mode, and it's right and to the right of a Thread's subject:



I've got to get myself to bed, but I hope that helps!

Thanks again. Every little bit helps. Now get some sleep! And remember I'm on the other side of the planet, so I'm wide awake.