Community Depreciated?

I'm kind of bummed out that the community has been depreciated to the footer of the site, its no longer a prominently featured focus of ChefSteps.

Speaking of which... I miss the old days when there were new recipes released every weekday. Lately we have been lucky to get new content 2x a month. Why the change in direction? Is the Joule project hogging all the resources? Just curious - obviously I love me some ChefSteps.com!

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robert.c.brown15

Agree, agree, agree! I've said stuff as well, but it doesn't matter. I think they've given up on the community. They killed it and haven't done much to try to fix it. They are probably taking Chefsteps in a different direction and the forum will be more a feedback and Q and A section for their latest products. Disappointing, but is what it is.

ttpoker

Only problem is the staff only respond to the DISCUSS comments right after a new recipe is released - that hasn't worked out very well so far. This is only an observation, not a complaint mind you - I'd rather have the community buried in the footer than no community at all, I'm really not complaining, hope my post is not misunderstood.

robert.c.brown15

It's all good. I'm complaining some. It's frustrating, but I've come to terms with it.

Afonso_Tito_de_Morais_164825

/agree..

Chris_Young_80640

Hi guys, so yes the current forum has been depreciated in the navigation. But no, we haven't given up on community.

And, yes, Joule has absorbed a lot of resource (and continues to do so at ChefSteps). But content and community have a very big role to play in the future of ChefSteps and Joule. Being blunt, the forum and our comments have been a pretty big pain point for us for a long time, and it's something we will be making better. But it's going to take time to do it right.

Now about content. The content team is aware that they haven't been putting out as much new content as usual (again, Joule) but be assured that isn't going to stay that way. A bunch of new stuff is already in post-production.

Huy_63293

Hi all, as some of you may know, I'm one of the engineers here at ChefSteps. Community has always been an important part of ChefSteps and now with the announce of Joule, we finally have breathing room to improve parts of the ecosystem that need more attention. I've actually spent a few days working an improved front end for comments which will put us in a position to iterate and improve the Community features at a much faster rate. Also with ChefSteps Premium, we have an opportunity to really create an environment where we can learn and share ideas with like-minded cooks around the world.

HammeredChef_DEFINITELY_does_NOT_work_at_22134

Sounds a lot like growing pains....but, we love new stuff

HammeredChef_DEFINITELY_does_NOT_work_at_22134

Thanks for the explanation and update

tshewman

From the outside looking in, I was able to get a glimpse of the inside. For those who saw the change in interaction of CS staff on the board, this was an unfortunate necessity (and was clear the minute I walked through their doors). I was fortunate to speak with Grant for ~2minutes and Nick and Ben for even less. With Chris for a few minutes, Lorraine, and Tim and Emmett while I test-drove Joule (which in retrospect was quite the tease now that I've ordered). They all expressed that they knew the forum was undergoing change and that the change was ultimately necessary, simply due to bandwidth (this is a very practical thing). And, although they've been quite focussed on Joule, when i was there, it was non-stop for them getting ready for and, performing more videos (for us and hopefully more new members). So, although we'd like to have them answering all our questions every day........there's a practical issue and the issue of trying to make the community larger. Some non cs staff here are essentially the base of the forum pyramid and needed to maintain the foundation of that pyramid. We all want new stuff and from what I can tell, CS is on full speed ahead in many directions. So the change is a very good thing. Just my .02.

Afonso_Tito_de_Morais_164825

Glad you're working on it! No pressure, it's just that this forum is a really big part of Chefsteps for a lot of us and we don't want to see it forgotten for the sake of the community!

Johan_Edstrom_5586

I'm gonna chime in with a slightly different opinion, community by definition is what we make of it, we are the community. Requiring Chris or Grant to answer every question is rather ridiculous. A Community like this is also free and you get exactly what you pay for.

tshewman

I would only (respectfully) disagree with Johan on one aspect. If we consider the exchanges, advice from some extremely smart cooks/chefs on the forum, I would say we get much more than we pay for. But he is correct otherwise (IMHO) it is up to us to make the forum.....and make it better.

Johan_Edstrom_5586

Hah!!! I like that.

Matthew_Snyder_68770

I would also point out that the glut of spam the board was inundated with for the first part of this year really cratered my enjoyment of the forum. Caused me to severely draw back my participation for a while, but that issue seems to have been well sorted.

ttpoker

Chris or Grant would not necessary, thats what interns, junior staff, and dedicated community managers are for. My former biz was one of the biggest forum based communities online (at it's time), and we ran that entire business with a staff of just 3 people and a ton of volunteers. It can be done, just takes a fresh look and a dedication to the platform. With that said, I agree with everything else you said of course (as usual).

ttpoker

I'm available to discuss the micro economics of forum and community management, sometimes the most complicated tasks are actually quite simple when you get a fresh look at the task at hand. Feel free to reach out to me if I can be of any help - I love ChefSteps, its the least I can do!

Afonso_Tito_de_Morais_164825

I don't mind that some answers I or others pose go unanswered by CS members and I absolutely understand it.That's what us, the community are here for. Asking questions, answering and finding solutions. The videos and recipes don't leave much space for error in interpretation. Most questions are mostly about tweaking and changing recipes for lack of ingredients, time or equipment, and that requires trial and error. If I want to find out something, I try it out and discuss with people. That's not the part that bothers me. What slightly bothers me is the fact the forum is no longer at the top page, making it harder for new people to find it and the community to grow. But hey, give these guys a break, they have improved our skills and knowledge in the kitchen in the last couple o' years with an unprecedented level of dedication! It's understandable they want to boost some parts of what CS is and 'sell their fish'. Companies don't sustain themselves with feedback and applause, and money, specially after so much investment, is a necessity. Just give them time, I'm sure this community will continue to grow. Long live Chefsteps!

Shivam_Daryanani_92859

Agreed on this. Of course you can't expect new content, and/or the CS staff answering questions all the time. However the link back to the forum in the navigation would be nice so there will be new people and new ideas.

Johan_Edstrom_5586

We could also revive some of the things we did early on, like the crowdsourced recipe variations that Brendan came up with, don't know if you remember but we tried egg poaching / flavoring in various forms. But that is a matter of time and interest as well. I'll happily admit I'm one of those that do things periodically.

ttpoker

I don't remember that crowed sourced example, but yes that is a splendid idea. Once of my fav CS recipes was the research attempt at making donuts - this could be done as a crowd sourced experiment lead by some of the more active users rather than provided as a formal class.... great idea.

ttpoker

On a related note, I just noticed we can no longer fork recipes. Is that intentional, or an unexpected side effect of the new recipe GUI?

Tim_Salazar_36007

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to drop in and add a quick note here from a product design perspective. I've been around ChefSteps since we were on Vanilla Forums, and through the experiment of the Community Beta here. It's still very much that: A Beta, and we're constantly listening and trying to figure out how we can help people cook more often. One of the biggest things that I see here is that there is actually a community of cooks that values each other and wants to hear from each other and share their trials, triumphs, and failures as well as knowledge. There are geographical and culture questions that would otherwise go unanswered if it were not for the forum. I think it's great and am glad that folks here agree with that.

Our plans for the forum will eventually come full circle. There are a dozen things we'd love to do to it, including really understanding what the value is for those that post in it, and what the value is to come and read everyday. We're seeing a pretty strong dichotomy between users that go to the forum, but not the main site and vice versa. We think that can be remedied by re-integrating the forum into our site in a more seamless way. As of now, the code really, really prevents us from doing this.

Additionally, the forum mobile experience is iffy at best, and we have a lot of work to do there. That goes the same for our Discovery App currently in the App and Google Play stores. All things we are currently prioritizing for the upcoming year. Obviously, Joule was our main priority but Joule, the hardware, is going to be so much fucking cooler when we bring the community along with it. And we will. We've got big plans for it, and if you understand how long it takes to build a platform, you'll be forgiving of the pace of progress here.

Thanks everyone for you patience with the Forum. We may have relegated the link to the footer for now, and we've heard from several people that they are unhappy about this, but just know that we are listening, and we're constantly iterating. We're really trying to grow at all edges, we just have way to many edges right now. Thanks again for your patience and know that community is and always will be core to our mission here.

That said: What are your biggest pain points? What are you missing that you'd like to see more of? What is the biggest value you get from the forum?

Johan_Edstrom_5586

My biggest thing has always been the integration of the forums with the main site.

Tim_Salazar_36007

Hey Johan—In what way do you mean?

Johan_Edstrom_5586

I'd love to see much tighter integration of the recipe comments to forum comments, now they are two separate entities, I think we'd benefit from as I think you pointed out merging the users of the website with the users of the forums.

Afonso_Tito_de_Morais_164825

I was scrolling through community created recipes a few days ago and am pondering to upload 50+ recipes I got on my phone and laptop. Better looks, more organized and people from here get to benefit from it. Plus, in the culinary world, sharing is caring. I wondered why people don't do it that often anymore..

douglas_bd

I would guess that was intentional. As I recall, there was a proliferation of 'forked' recipes without any material differences from the original. It created clutter. I thought you could still fork, it just didn't show up in recipe lists, but maybe that feature was removed altogether. I'd really be in favor for some curation of the community recipes. I like the ability to add recipes, but quickly get frustrated when browsing by the many entries that have a great looking dish pictured, but no recipe. I'd like to see it cleaned up either by a mod, or through some sort of community voting feature designed to weed out anything that didn't belong.

Afonso_Tito_de_Morais_164825

Have you considered adding a sidebar display to the main page where pictures, posts, videos and what not from the community are showed? Like, "what are people cooking" type of thing?

Tim_Salazar_36007

Yes, that's one of the features we care about most--community sharing what they've cooked. Now think about hardware integration there; share what you cooked, plus time and temp, plus a Joule button. Sharing a meal starts to take on a new meaning...

Tim_Salazar_36007

We lost it. Gone but not forgotten. We're going to be reimagining parts of the web going forward, and once hardware integration starts to flow through the site, things like this may come roaring back because he utility is just awesome.

Afonso_Tito_de_Morais_164825

Sounds great!

ttpoker

Same core issue that the Community has then, the lack of a Mod presence. Thats a shame, forking had great potential.

ttpoker

Would be nice to see Premium Content added to the mobile app eventually. I'm sure it's already on your radar, but it can't hurt to toss in this reminder ;-)

douglas_bd

I'd love that! I often try to find recipes in the app, only to find that they were part of a class and not included there. They can be pulled up via the browser on my phone, but it's not as convenient in the kitchen.

Tim_Salazar_36007

Keep reminding, it helps us prioritize (although this one is already pretty high up there)

Tim_Salazar_36007

Even the gallery on mobile doesn't show premium recipes right now! Big gap that we want to fix.

Brendan_Lee_56950

Here's my take:

I've been here since day one and the thing I think we are missing right now is an overall goal/ethos for the site and forum. In the beginning, it was a new shiny, fun, gift that we all were trying to fully understand. Modernist cooking was fairly new to the majority of us who first joined and we were die hard in our ambitions to create cool shit and test out everything. That was fun and I think it was so much more meaningful because we all were doing it under the umbrella of "learn how to do X" or "use ingredient Y". Slowly, as more people joined up and the site itself started to produce more content above and beyond modernist techniques we get the "what's for dinner" thread, this was cool because it was a fun way to share and comment on others (i.e. why instagram is popular). This essentially is dead because of the new forum UI. But back to the main point, I think the community as a whole lacks direction. Most of the forums that I've been a part of that are very successful and engaging have a very specific focus or are at least partitioned such that people with specific questions or interests can find each other easily. The current format is kind of like fishing, we throw out a question, idea, topic, etc, and hope that someone out there shares enough interest to nibble and spark a conversation. All the while the conversation gets buried because of the "feed-like" UI.

TL;DR we need to refocus the purpose of the forum to allow for better organization of topics, moderation, and a way to keep the threads that are most important to the users alive and front and center.

pgcath

I took a break from actively participating in communities while I was working through some health issues, but for me, the forums are always what I thought of as the ChefSteps community, and I have to admit, the relegation to the footer is a bit of a bummer. A simple nav tweak there would help a lot.

I echo what a lot of others have said - we're glad you're working on it, we're understanding, and we're here to help when you get the infrastructure laid. I think that an expanded community focus here would do a world of good, simply because from what we know of ChefSteps from your videos, you're very interested in your local community.

I'd go out on a limb and say that a lot of forum members consider themselves at least partially part of the ChefSteps tribe, so some grumbling is just because we're jealous of the new kid (Joule). We'll get over it.