The following quotes are from the What internet links are there for list of restaurants in any given US city? thread:Perhaps that may be because there have not been Senior Moderators officially appointed on FlyerTalk — until recently.

Senior Moderators have moderator access to all forums that do not have moderators assigned to them, so we can do things to assist FlyerTalk members that could not be done in the past.

Speaking for myself, I will make an offer: anyone who wants to assist me on this project, please send me your suggestions of how you believe this information should be organized, and I will do my best to work with you. I cannot do it all myself, so I will need commitment from those of you who volunteer to assist me. This will be an enormous project that will take time, so if we do embark on this, please bear with me.

After the information is finally organized, any additional threads thereafter that are similar in nature will be merged with threads that already exist.

Senior Moderators have no “jurisdiction” over the FlyerTalk Reviews area, but restaurant reviews do exist in this area and can be organized in a number of different ways. In fact, individual restaurant reviews, such as this one for the Metropolitan Grill in Seattle, can be linked as well.It is only my pleasure, travelmad478.

Now this one response is a compelling reason to organize the information in a manner that is easy to find and convenient for as many FlyerTalk members as possible. There must be more FlyerTalk members who feel the same way as travelmad478.

After all, everyone benefits if the information is properly organized.

Do we have a deal?

Regards,

Canarsie
Senior Moderator

I like the idea of sorting dining info by geographic location. We could make link or stickies to those cities that are featured in "Trave&Dining" sections. I am a relative newbie, but would be glad to help.

-Uck

perhaps, I'm very jaded still. Sending you a pm.

Since there are already geographically segmented Travel forums, why not just put all restaurant reviews and forum questions in "sister sections" to those forums? The system now goes, for example:

--Travel&Dining
----Featured Destinations
-------London
-------New York


So my suggestion would be:

--Travel&Dining
----Featured Destinations
-------London
---------London travel
---------London dining
-------New York
---------New York travel
---------New York dining

and so on.

I will do everything I possibly can to assist, but I have limited administrative powers, so I cannot re-organize actual sections of FlyerTalk.

Even if I did possess those full administrative powers as a Senior Moderator, I would still be unable to do it, as re-organization of forums on FlyerTalk would fall within the jurisdiction of the TalkBoard. TalkBoard members would have to agree to take a vote on this issue, but it must be specifically outlined.

I can do many things with existing threads in FlyerTalk forums that are not assigned any moderators.

I apologize if I may have given the wrong impression about what I am able to do on FlyerTalk. However, this does not lessen the importance and belief that dining information could be better organized, as I believe that dining is an essential part of travel — and, in many cases, dining can earn one miles and points. It also does not necessarily mean that absolutely nothing will be done pertaining to the scattering of dining information. It simply means that I cannot do it all myself.

The assistance of as many FlyerTalk members as possible is still requested. If there is indeed enough of a demand, something will be done.

I suggest a slight variation of that suggested by TravelMad478: rather than creating two new fora for each destination, create a sticky for Dining, with reviews and comments for restaurants within that destination area linked into the sticky with a brief description for the link. (Similarly, I think there should also be stickies for both links to hotels and links to trip reports/planning related to those destinations). Based on the feedback I saw posted last year to several suggestions on reorganizing the T&D section, there seems to be (understandable) resistance to setting up new fora, primarily due to administrative and moderating concerns.

In creating the links, the more descriptive, the better. For example, if there was a thread discussing The Varsity, in the Dining sticky within the South forum, the link to that thread might be listed as "GA--Atlanta--Midtown--Burgers--Varsity Restaurant." That way, someone scanning the list in the sticky who was planning to travel to the ATL area could easily pick out restaurants that might interest them. Also, within a sticky, a person could use the Windows Find function (Ctrl-F) to search for "GA" or "Atlanta." As long as the hypothetical thread was in either the South forum or DiningBuzz, I don't think it matters. But if elsewhere, then I would think a mod should move it into one of those fora.

It will take a while for people to learn where to look, but eventually most people will catch on. I suspect that the number of threads asking how to convert mileage or points from program A to program B dropped significantly after the debut of Mileage Converter (for which I applaud the FT Team), given the frequent post-debut response of directing those posing the question to Mileage Converter. To have a common spot where people could go to find out, for example, what restaurants in San Francisco have been discussed (or the best things to do for a day in Denver, etc.) would make the site even more useful (and would probably cut down on a fair number of threads now defaulting into TravelBuzz or another general forum).

Canarsie, if you get a project like this going, I don't mind lending a hand as time permits, so PM me to discuss further.

I was originally thinking along the lines of creating an all-encompassing “sticky” thread that would contain links to other threads in the DiningBuzz!, TravelBuzz! and the geographic segments of the Travel forum. Of course, the dining information and links in that proposed thread would be organized. This is a project that is within my control and I would be more than happy to launch it, and use this thread as a commentary and suggestion thread.

Combined with the organization of the proposed “sticky” thread, if Sweet Willie wanted to launch another contest to raise awareness to the DiningBuzz! forum, like he has done in the past, I believe it would be an excellent idea.

If anyone spots a thread in TravelBuzz! that is dining-oriented and feels it needs to be moved in the DiningBuzz! forum, I could always ask richard, the moderator of the TravelBuzz! forum, to see if he will co-operate in the re-organization effort by moving those threads.

I full understand and completely agree with Sweet Willie that awareness of dining information needs to be increased on FlyerTalk.

I appreciate your volunteering to assist, TRRed. Thank you!

Does anyone else have additional ideas or input?

Can you explain a bit more on where this "sticky" would live? How do people know which locations they're able to search? And how would a person go about asking a dining question for a specific location, rather than just doing a search for existing posts?

I like TRRed's idea (especially if mine is too difficult to implement, given the need for TalkBoard approval). The one thing I wonder is who will be responsible for doing all that linking and editing of the "stickies" as successive dining-related posts appear all over FT. Of course, if someone is willing to put in the time to do this, more power to 'em. Unfortunately, I am already a forum editor on another website and can't even manage to fulfill my duties properly there, so I don't want to volunteer