I've noticed that in the past week we've had some new commenters here, and I'm delighted. Welcome.

This seems like a good time to direct you to our commenting how to's. They boil down to 1) be civil to other commenters and 2) remember this isn't my personal blog. It's the Sun's blog, and it is monitored by the higher ups.

I'll also point out the directions for linking, although you certainly don't have to use them if you'd rather just include the Web address. You can find both posts at a later date under the Categories to the right on the main page. ...

Continue reading "Welcome to some new voices" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 7:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (27)
Categories: Commenting
        

Well, boys and girls, today we reached an important milestone at Dining@Large.

At 5:18 p.m. today, Lissa posted our 50,000th comment!!!!! She joins Hal Laurent, our Voice of Reason; Owl Meat; e and LEC as milestone winners of fabulous prizes, which have sometimes been hard to collect. And probably will be particularly hard to collect now that our parent company is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

But I will do my best for you, Lissa.

Here were her immortal words: ...

Continue reading "Balloons!!! Party hats!!! Break out the champagne!!!" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Categories: Commenting
        

Last night at 8:08 p.m. mdlrvrmuncher posted a comment that read in part, "Wow-you are working too late," I think because I had answered an earlier comment he/she had made, not because I had published it.

It made me think I should explain again how this whole commenting thing works.

I just checked, and since this time yesterday, I've read and published 173 comments. This is the most time-comsuming part of my job now, because of how the blogware is set up to allow me to read them. (It's a two-step process.) ...

Continue reading "Once more, with feeling" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 11:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (25)
Categories: Commenting
        

Just so everyone understands the ground rules of commenting on Dining@Large, I'm going to state them here, as I did last Jan. 1 -- so we can start off the year on the right foot.

1) You don't have to use your real name or any name. You don't have to put in an e-mail, although there are certain advantages for you if you do.

2) I can't "publish" comments that might get me and/or you sued. If you are served a well-done steak at a restaurant when you ordered rare and want to talk about it, that's one thing. Saying that a place has rats unless the health department has reported it is another, even if I know you're probably right. If you've left a valid e-mail, I will tell you why I couldn't publish your comment.

3) I'm assuming that faithful readers have two things in common, no matter what their differences: They love good food, and their Holy Grail is the perfect restaurant experience.  That seems to me a good enough basis for a certain degree of civility when you're responding to other posts. In fact, please bend over backwards to be polite unless you know your comment won't be misinterpreted. I also hope people will try to not be too thin-skinned and realize that not every disagreement is a personal attack.

4) Posts that make me queasy are off-limits. To paraphrase Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop, my stomach is my life. Also I don't like juvenile bathroom humor. And, of course, profanity etc. etc.

5) I'm fair game, but not other reviewers, or really hateful comments about anyone else. See Rule No. 3. And frankly, if I'm having a bad day, really hateful comments about me aren't going to get published either.

6) I hope regulars will continue to encourage new people to participate by acknowledging their comments in some way, and will be extra-gentle when responding to first-timers. Commenting for the first -- or second or third -- time can be scary for everyone but Bucky. As I said to someone once, getting folks to comment is like trying to coax shy little kittens out from under the sofa. It's nice to have new voices in the discussion.

Thanks for reading -- and commenting,

Elizabeth

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 7:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)
Categories: Commenting
        

Dear RedFishEx:

I'm writing an open letter to you because you put in a nonexistent e-mail address when you posted your comment. That annoyed me. I don't care whether you put in a working e-mail or no e-mail when you post (although the higher ups probably do), but I wrote a long e-mail back to you about your post and why I wasn't publishing it, and my e-mail bounced back. Just leave the space blank next time if you don't want to hear from me. ...

Continue reading "Why your comment didn't get published" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 12:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (37)
Categories: Commenting
        

Welcome to the Commenting Hall of Fame, LEC. You have just posted our 20,000th comment, a figure I'm more proud of than any other statistic involving Dining@Large.

There is only so much I have to say about restaurants, food in general and life that can be of interest to anyone else but my immediate family. And not so much even to them after awhile. It's the variety of voices and opinions that continues to make this blog interesting. (Especially to me.)

Let's see what wonderful prizes our crack marketing manager Anne Burger (or whatever her new title is; she's been promoted) has for our winner.

Anne? ...

Continue reading "Balloons!!! Party hats!!! Break out the champagne!!!" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 8:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)
Categories: Commenting
        

I'm guessing that posting a comment is taking a particularly long time today. One newbie just now posted her comment 11 times, a new record. I feel your pain; it takes forever to publish them, too. But please, try to restrain yourself and only post once. It will happen.

The problem is that when you keep trying to post, they all do show up eventually. Then I have to kill them out, a minor but tedious process, or sometimes I publish them twice by mistake. 

I usually go read a couple of chapters of War and Peace, and then, voila! The comments are published. I'm sure that will work for posting comments as well. ...

Continue reading "Please watch the itchy trigger finger" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 4:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: Commenting
        

The exchange between Rev' Ed and Isabel yesterday inspired me to do a separate post reminding folks that what seems to be an exchange may not be. It's my fault for not being able to publish comments in a timely fashion.

What happens is that I come into work in the morning or back from lunch or an interview, and I have 20 comments that I publish all at once. So even though it looks as if Isabel was commenting on Rev' Ed's post, she really wasn't. It was published at the same time hers was.

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Commenting
        

I know the last time we hit a commenting milestone, it was quite traumatic for you, Anne Burger. As the marketing manager extraordinaire for BaltimoreSun.com, you came up with a lovely gift for our 3,000th commenter, the inestimable Owl Meat Jerky, who had this to say: ...

Continue reading "You can run but you can't hide, Anne Burger" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 5:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (10)
Categories: Commenting
        

This comment from Rosebud struck me as ominous:

Where is OMG, anyway.  There hasn't been a peep from him for a day or two.  And our porky friend has been quiet, too. 

I, too, had been wondering. Then TerrierMom made this comment that really made me feel bad: ... 

Continue reading "Mea culpa and Rule No. 2" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Commenting
        

Recently someone posted a lengthy but well-reasoned negative comment about a restaurant. And then, to make sure other potential customers didn't miss it, he/she posted the same comment under a couple of other entries where the restaurant had been mentioned.

I "published" all three comments because I thought it was kind of a clever way to get his/her points across.

I guess he/she was pleased with his/her success, because the next thing I know, the comment had been posted under two more entries. At that point, it began to feel like spam. I killed out all but the first one.

The moral of this story, class? 

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 3:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Commenting
        

As Dining@Large's first year draws to a close, I have some advice for new readers who want to post comments. Choose a user name carefully. Going back to look at the first comments, I see that people used names like Catherine and Bill and Kate, and are probably bitterly regretting it now -- except for HelloWorld who had this insightful observation under a post on peppermint ice cream:

Peace people We love you

But I digress. My point is, regular contributors have learned that it's good to have a user name that differentiates them from other posters, such as Robert of Cross Keys, Piano Rob, Robert the Single One, and so on. Some have decided they simply wanted to spread their wings a bit after a few months and have taken on new personae...

Continue reading "Choose your user name carefully" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (45)
Categories: Commenting
        

Maybe this will work. Here's how you create a link in a comment:

<a href="the URL here" rel="nofollow">the link here</a>.

If you need to find this post later, just click on the category "Commenting" to the right.

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Commenting
        

Dahlink got an error message yesterday when she hadn't posted since early morning that said:

Continue reading "Too many comments have been submitted from you" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (11)
Categories: Commenting
        

I just got this e-mail from a reader, and I thought it might be time to answer some of these questions again so we can suck even more people into wasting even more hours posting on the blog:

Continue reading "So you want to post a comment?" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (14)
Categories: Commenting
        

I want to thank everyone for the funny and very nice comments posted under What You Missed such as:

Why do you want me to downgrade to only checking 3 or 4 times a day?

Posted by: Hal Laurent | January 31, 2008 8:58

While I wasn't fishing for compliments (the post was aimed at the people who tell me they mean to check my blog but they forget to), I was more than happy to get them. Thanks again.

Anyway, I had been planning to post my favorite comments of 2008 so far at the end of January, but at the very end (including under that post) there were too many, so I'll just list the ones I had collected before then:

Continue reading "Comments you might have missed" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 6:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Commenting
        

I was hoping the foie gras discussion would die a natural death, but apparently that's not going to happen. I think both sides have said about all there is to say about their positions, and now it's devolved into name calling. I'm invoking Rule No. 2 here and declaring a moratorium on the whole subject.

Let's move on. If you're still feeling cranky and want to yell at someone, you can tell me how WRONG, WRONG, WRONG I am in my choice of diners.

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (12)
Categories: Commenting
        

I've noticed lately that more people whose names haven't appeared before have been taking part in discussions, and that's great. If you happen to be new readers, I want to point out a feature of the blog that you may not have noticed.

On the right of the main page under Categories and Recent Posts is an update of Most Recent Comments. If I've been lazy about posting a new entry, like today, some of the commenters have probably picked up the slack. I love that.

It's not literally the most recent comments, but the most recent comments under five different subjects, so there might actually be several new comments under the entry you're interested in. It's particularly helpful when someone has gone back and posted under an old subject, as Clark did under Top Ten Cheap Eats.

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Commenting
        

This is very exciting:  Owl Meat Jerky has just posted the 3,000th comment on Dining@Large:

Screaming Yello Zonkers
Remember the great Quisp versus Quake war of the early 70s?  It all turned ugly when they showed graphic photos of Quisp's POW camps.

As you may remember, Hal Laurent was installed in the Commenting Hall of Fame last September for being our 1,000 commentor with the immortal words: ...

Continue reading "Congratulations! More balloons! Party hats!" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)
Categories: Commenting
        

Here's my problem with the heated discussion going on under Top Ten Restaurants Open on Christmas Day. It's more fun for me if there's a discussion going on as opposed to just my saying something and someone else reacting to it. And I'm not in the business of censorship. On the other hand, I want everyone who participates to enjoy the discussion, and I'm guessing neither side in the Working on Christmas debate is enjoying it anymore.

But aside from that, it's starting to get personal. And you all know the Rules, specifically Rule No. 2. I don't want anyone to feel he or she is going to get attacked for speaking up.

And I thought this would be the most boring Top Ten of the year. Oh well, at least it didn't devolve into a fight over crab cakes. 

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)
Categories: Commenting
        

I just received an insightful e-mail from a reader about my entry Iconic Figures of the Baltimore Restaurant Scene, and I asked if he/she would post it under the entry as part of the ongoing conversation.

Here's what he/she wrote back: ...

Continue reading "So you want to comment" »

Posted by Elizabeth Large at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)
Categories: Commenting