@rumtscho is the room owner? What does that mean?

Hmmmm, seems like if the previous owner hasn't been in the room for 30 days, then a new owner is appointed based on traffic. Congrats, @rumtscho, you're the new Frying Pan addict!

@yossarian- I am hesitant to answer your lemon question because I think I know the answer that you are fishing for.

It seems like cheating if I already know the answer. :/

I actually asked the question because I was having a safety discussion on the sous vide blog that came up with the process of preserving lemons in that manner. So I asked the author to come and add her technique. That's why I asked it, so I would in fact appreciate you not answering.

Ha. And it's not cheating if you already know the answer. It's better than having to use google-fu that the OP could have done. But in this case, it's an effort to lure in a blogger. I'm hoping the answer I'm looking for doesn't appear before they get to it.

@yossarian funny, I've only chatted here twice here. Mind you, I did say a lot each time, but still I'd expect others to have said more over the last 30 days.

@rumtscho, apparently it does a 30 day average. Apparently you've said a lot here recently!

So what does it mean that I'm the owner of the room? I hope nobody expects me to repaint the wals.

Also, the mods are already room owners (or have room owner powers), so me, hobodave, and aaronut weren't in the running. I think it was probably just between you and @Sobachatina.

Well, I am verbose when I have something to say, but for this to push the average so high - I am surprised

OK, sorry @Sobachatina, it seems I beat you in a competition I didn't know was going on and hadn't the slightest interest in winning.

I think you just have some new powers in the room, like deleting posts, unstarring posts, etc. I'm not positive though. I don't really know what it means and just did a little poking about on meta.SO when I saw that message.

I didn't know there was a competition going on.

I completely support you as room owner anyway.

Ha. there wasn't. I don't even know who the previous room owner was who hadn't been active.

Long may you reign.

@yossarian- I'm perfectly happy to not answer the question for your sake. In fact I'm usually willing to do nothing if it is helpful.

Me neither. Seems the SO system is even more obsessed with measuring us than I knew.

Indeed, anytime doing nothing is considered helpful, sign me the fuck up.

I'll let you know if I don't think she's going to answer, and you can throw it up there.

Thank you both for the congratulations. My first law as a new ruler is that you all are grown up enough to look after your own conversations, and I have no intention of deleting your posts or stars.

Jeez dude. That's not very nice. No need to get snippy about it. I think all this power has gone to your head. (I made the joke malicious edit of above chat as follows: Thank you both for the congratulations. My first law as a new ruler is that you all are children, incapable of looking after your own conversations, and I have every intention of deleting your posts and stars. You've proved you are not worthy of looking after yourselves.)

Also, it appears that if you edit someone else's post, there is absolutely no record of that fact at all.

C'mon, that's the first time I've been the ruler of anything. Alright, except the times I played Civ2.

Whoops, I also meant to copy what you had actually written so I could revert your comment, but I failed. D'oh. Malicious edit FTW.

Well, I just wanted to try it on your message, but it looks like I can't edit it at all.

Oh, nevermind, you can see the edit history. And there's a little icon that indicates it was edited.

Hey, and I can't edit your posts. Or even Sobachatinas.

Looks like I am not so supreme a ruler after all.

oh. well, I guess you don't get cool new powers.

Emperors new clothes. ;o)

I can "pin" a message now, don't know if it was possible earlier.

I have no idea. It's hard to tell what the differences are when you never explored the features in the first place.

OK, I looked at Root Access and I can't pin there. So that must be the difference.

Now I pinned a message, but don't know how it differs from a star.

I can star and flag but I can't pin.

I noticed that. But I don't know what a pin is supposed to be, except that the star is golden.

Also, I can't revert the malicious edit @yossarian made. Oh well, as I apparently don't have any super powers besides the ability to award tiny golden stars, I hope you won't expect me to actually do anything for you, dear subjects.

Ha. The diamond is strong. I've rolled back your chat and added the malicious edit in to one of my comments so the conversation still makes some sense.

OK, I figured it out. I can 1) rename the room, 2) schedule events, 3) turn the room to a closed one, 4) grant privileges to users if the room is closed, 5) add feeds, 6) migrate messages to another room. I guess you could ask me if you need some of these done (but contacting a mod is probably quicker).

hehe, particularly since there are 7 people frequently in this room and three are mods.

Maybe I should abuse my new power and change the byline to "the seven bubbles chat" then.

Is the word "potburner" recognizable in English?

potburner? no, never heard that before.

@sargesmith, @Sobachatina, @mien, @rumtscho, Any thoughts on how we could adapt something like what is going on over at gaming to cooking? meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/2010/…

that's a pity, would have liked to change it to "the potburners' corner".

I can't think of anything off the top of my head. New cooking books don't seem to generate the same interest (or relating traffic spike) as games...

It is a literal translation of an expression which means "an absentminded person", but the picture behind it is a housewife who puts a pot on the stove and goes to have a chat with the neighbour and stays there while the stew chars.

@yossarian, I don't recall seeing any cookbook-related questions on the site. So the "answer questions about them" part just can't work.

It could be useful with new kitchen tools. But if it is connected to a specific brand, the answer will have to be on the lines of "for that you need to use an immersion blender. The newest Brown SuperMegaBlender with seven exchangable blades is just the perfect one for your case", which I wouldn't do. And if the brand is not important, providing me with a new blender won't raise my expertise, because I already have experience with immersion blenders.

It could be helpful for the things which other people have heard of, but seldom experienced. But in terms of kitchen equipment, the cost of a single piece is much above than the €50 price tag of the average big game title. Think sous vide cookers and the like.

While we could do it for rare ingredients, designating me to be the "safran expert" and you the "xanthan expert", I doubt that these will do much in the way of promotion.

Yes, I had the same initial reaction.

And, that was what I guessed pot burner to mean, but it's not a phrase that's in usage, at least in America.

But if we need initiatives - not necessarily trafic-increasing ones, but community-building ones, we could certainly do something.

I find it especially nice at photography, where everybody can submit a picture and the best one is seen in the header for the next week.

We don't have to make it a competition though.

We could have a community cooking effort.

We decide on an ingredient for the week.

Everybody who wants to, cooks something with the ingredient.

And has to post how their experience went, and upload a picture.

The whole thread is made into a community wiki or some such.

Then whoever needs to know what there is to know about using the ingredient, can read the thread to 1) get ideas of different things which can be done with it, 2) read the warnings ("be careful to never overcook that one") or even see it as a challenge if he could do better (somebody writes that "I made a Guiness sauce but it turned out too bitter, I should have tried a lower temperature", and the reader thinks "I bet I can do better, let's try").

This could hook people who'd normally just peek their nose in to ask a single question and then disappear, they don't return to answer other people's questions, because they don't have the expertise or the motivation.

And they don't care about others' specific questions, because they don't have these specific problems.

"What can be cooked with X" is a matter every hobby cook should be able to relate to.

And while it shouldn't be allowed as a question because it doesn't have a best answer, a single active community wiki with a limited time for new answers won't overtake the useful questions, and will generate hits.

That is a very cool idea rumtscho! I like it a lot.

Maybe there could be some small price to encourage participation, as in that the person who created the answer with the most votes gets some amount of points

Or as many points as there are votes, if there aren't too many

If we did it every 2 weeks, or even once a month, it could be a new cw for each ingredient.

And once he has enough points on his account, he can ask us to buy him something cooking-related - a book, a piece of equipment, whatever.

The reason that I asked is that SE is asking us if we could do something like what gamin is doing (I think they sent the email out to all the sites). Maybe they'd sponser some prizes. It would certainly be a great way to get people from other blogs / forums involved in the site.

He decides what he wants, we make a hard exchange rate between points and currency, and when he has the points, gets the price.

Or it's just a $30 Amazon gift card to buy a cooking book.

per contest.

Much simpler. ;)

Well, if there is some kind of competition going on, I can imagine that people who aren't involved here but have good knowledge of cooking will come here to take part. Even if the price isn't very much to very good hobby cooks - food bloggers probably have good kitchen equipment and more cooking books than time to reed them - they could come here for the spirit of the competition

and once the site gains reputation, they'll come here to boost their own reputation

Surely there are many possibilities to reward the price. The details can be decided later.

I described the first idea I had, the other people here can certainly improve on it.

The reason why I didn't say "amazon gift card" outright is that amazon sells so much other things besides cooking stuff.

Thanks. If you don't mind, I will submit that suggestion (and credit you, obviously).

I thought of gift card for a known kitchen equipment store, but I don't think that there is one which operates in all parts of the world, and I feel responsible to represent the non-north americans here.

The where? I don't know what that means? There's a world outside North America?

Feel free to put the idea in motion, I invested the last 10 minutes in thinking it up because I liked it :) So obvoiusly, I'd like to see it implemented.

Yes, there is. And presumably, I know more about it (and about NA) than you, just by virtue of not being American. And you can believe that right up to the point where I have to take an actual exam in geography.

My initial idea was for a new ingredient every week, but I don't know how much time the people will want to experiment, and of course, the less contests, the bigger every individual prize will be.

So two weeks is probably better.

Is there a way to close a question to new answers but allow edits and comments to the existing ones? Because that would be probably a good thing to do.

We don't want new entries after the time is up, but if we want to build a thread which is not interesting only for the duration of the contest, but also represents a useful knowledge base on the ingredient, we should allow for later additions. Like an entry which says "the peas were great, but the meat was stringy", and a month later the poster or somebody else prepares the same dish and updates "I found out that brining the meat first makes it much better".

Yes, there are ways to lock down a question.

Also, I'm actually English, so :p

puh, English

@stephennmcdonald, I'm interested in your thoughts too: Any thoughts on how we could adapt something like what is going on over at gaming to cooking? meta.gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/2010/…

Says the German. Please.

We know you've always looked at "the continent" from above.

Is it my fault that we're actually superior?

;)

Go hide from the rain, island dweller :) The only superior things in England are the old BBC series and Terry Pratchett.

@yossarian, another addition to the ingredient competition idea

We make a header like at photography.stackexchange.com

With two pictures

One is the ingredient of the current contest (raw)

The other one is the winner dish of the last week.

Instant visibility even for fist-time site visitors.

@yossarian- It looks like the gaming promotion is an attempt to drive traffic around high interest events.

I can't think of any universal high interest events on cooking. Most cooking events that I can think of are local affairs.

What we could do is pick topics that we would like to be a resource for.

I'll pick sous-vide as an example because we are both interested in it.

Sponsor cookbooks or a gift card for ingredients with the intent on thoroughly exploring one technique.

It's still a lot more subjective than the gaming plan because how do you pick good research topics?

I like that idea too. I guess it depends a little on what SE wants us to do. I actually think that the cooking contest idea could help drive traffic through blogs, promotion, etc.

That's a good point- we could basically define our own event.

Your idea could work too if we picked members of the blog community to participate in their area of expertise, but it's a bit more work to get done.

That's true.

I realize that I have a problem asking questions that I know the answer to.

Or even questions that I can find the answer to easily.

For this reason it is difficult for me to ask many questions at all because I can usually find existing answers.

If I tackled a technique with the mindset that it was a research project then I could simply make a note of all the questions that I have and answer for myself as I learn.

Then- by asking the set at the completion of (or during) the research the expertise of the site would be expanded.

And I wouldn't feel like I'm an idiot asking questions that I can find the answer to in the books that I have.

Yeah, I ask questions here because it's easy and it adds to the value of the site.

That's the way it is supposed to be.

I've also gotten far enough down some of the molecular gastronomy stuff that I have real qeustions I can't answer

Unfortunately not many people here can yet.

So how about this- you become the expert and then you can answer my questions when I get there.

Mostly they get answered (by aaronut, Michael, and daniel)

haha. I'm trying.

Whatever happened to Darin?

His answers were always spectacular.

@Sobachatina, I like the idea that the expert community members share their experience here.

But just posting a question to which you know the answer is really not so good.

I started following his blog.

And if you just start something like your own column, why? We are not a blog or something.

We are community driven.

@rumtscho- That is a good point.

I would like to take up your idea and mutate it a bit

For example, when one of us has time for research, the way you describe it

he announces it

The community then submits research topics

One is chosen

And he is expected to go through a number of experiments to make the best of the topic

maybe "problem description" is better than "topic", like in a math problem

And then he posts a descriptions of his experiments, what problems he encountered, and how he solved it.

My idea would be for the answer to be Kenji Lopez like, but maybe this is just my style

Interesting.

This is not unlike what already goes on here.

Or maybe there shouldn't be "someone announces that he has time for a project"

You can tell what people are experimenting with by the questions that they ask.

Maybe we should have an open list of projects, with people bidding on the honour to do a project

Speaking of which, @yossarian, how did the jerky turn out?

The way it is now, there are seldom people who would see a question and do an experiment in their own kitchen just to provide a good answer

I did it once, but I was bored then. Besides, it was about chocolate :)

If there is a prize for a good report, maybe people would do the research.

I do like the idea of producing original research. Answers that don't just link elsewhere but have results of experiments that answer the question.

That introduces an odd social dynamic though.

The first questions get voted up the fastest even if they are wrong.

This encourages people to guess quickly for votes rather than producing more quality answers.

And the community would follow it in real time and add suggestions. ("I tried frying it in the pan, but got an overcooked crust and a raw center. So I decided to go with the oven instead". Says researcher.A reader asks "Have you tried breading it first, then dumping it into the pan?")

So we should set a minimum quality threshold of an answer.

For this type of question only.

The special "community research" threads.

The voting is supposed to let the community indicate quality answers.

That's an interesting thought.

You are required to describe an experiment you actually did, and upload pictures. Else the mods remove your answer.

I wonder if they would let us have specialized questions/answers like that.

It is an appealing thought.

If this is a new, monitored, promotional idea, why not?

An event should have stricter rules than a general question.

Usually when I start thinking this way Aaronut lets me know how exactly it doesn't match stackexchange's vision.

Obviously, we want these events to be a highlight, not to replace the current kind of questions.

There should be only one active at the same time, and there should be a time limit after which another one becomes active. Or similar.

I think care would also have to be taken to make sure that it was still easy for anyone to participate and not make it an elitist event just for some of the community.

It is just a different thing to offer the community. Like chat. Chat doesn't have to follow the stackexchange vision for questions. A contest doesn't have to, either.

If the requirement is just to concoct something in your own kitchen and photograph it, I think that the entry barrier is sufficiently low.

I'm not a very competitive person myself but I can see something like this having a good effect on the community and expanding the recorded knowledge.

Unless there are expensive ingredients or equipment involved.

@rumtscho, I disagree that you shouldn't ask questions that you know the answer to. If the question is interesting, I think it belongs on the site. I semi-regularly ask questions I know the answer to. I let someone else answer them though.

@yossarian, interesting thought. What do you do if nobody has the correct answer?

At that point, I'd answer it. Although, I have not had to do that to this point.

My most recent question is a good example. Although, I asked it specifically to try and get a blog author to come and give their answer. cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/13987/…

I would like more people to ask good questions even if they know the answer.

@Sobachatina, the jerky came out great. It was a little crystally to being with, but after it sat for a day or so, that went away. I assume some moisture disolved the crystals? It was a little sweet, kind of smoky, with a bit of bite. Really good.

I think that this may be a mod thing. I use the site for selfish reasons, because I want to learn new things, and because it is fun thinking about the things people ask and arriving at an answer. You, on the other hand, probably feel more responsible for the site as a whole, the richness of its covered topics, etc. So you are seeding the knowledge. It is cool, I just wouldn't have arrived at the idea by myself.

Sounds delicious.

1:1:1 maple, bourbon, soy, simmered with ginger.

Crystally with salt or something else?

Nope. I disagree, @rumtscho. I did that long before being a mod (which was a recent development for me). For selfish reasons, it's good to get rep. ;o)

I think it was sugar from the maple syrup that made it kind of crunchy.

That makes sense.

It would definitely tend to pull water from the air. It needs to be sealed or else it will eventually reabsorb enough to spoil.

Especially in Atlanta.

I don't know which came first, moderatorhood or the wish to make the site better (am I really creating new words in a foreign language here?). But I think they must be somehow related. Luring bloggers to the site isn't going to give you more rep, and yet you are doing it. Confess it, you just care about us.

So you are actually an Atlantian Englishman?

@rumtscho- yes- and you're doing it really well. "moderatorhood" is a keeper.

Funny, but it was better after it had absorbed a bit of moisture. The texture was better, as "crunchy" was a bit weird for beef jerky.

I was born in Amsterdam, lived in London till about 10, and then moved to Atlanta, where I've been for just over 20 years.

I claim European or American identity as it serves my purpose. ;o)

I'll bet @Daniel hits 10k today.

Are you going to start a push campaign?

That isn't really necessary in this case. His answers do a good job without my puny help.

I just envy those with those attractive abbreviated reps.

I just stumbled on the chat of SuperUser today when somebody was 3-4 votes short. I was actually too late with the upvoting, he got it very quickly.

Time for work. Talk to you later.

OK, for me it is time to go back home. Nice to have chatted a bit. Bye.

@yossarian, are you going to submit sobachatina's idea too? Because I think that sponsored "original research threads" can be great.

Yeah, I was going to discuss some other thoughts with aaronut and hobodave, and then submit a list of ideas.

@yossarian: it would be cool indeed :) I didn't read everything that was said about this the topic here (you guys talk too much ;-) ), but I liked the idea that there is an 'ingredient of the week/month' and everybody who wants, can try to make the best/most orginal thing... :)

I'm not sure about prices though

real stuff = money

and i dont know which cookbooks or equipment everybody here has :)

the winner gets +500 rep? or a badge?

but that's not really motivating after a while I guess

@mien- I would do it for a seasoned advice T-shirt.

That would be awesome.

:D

will there be girlies?

or aprons? ;-)

Actually- I wouldn't mind an apron either for that matter but that wouldn't get as much visibility.

Thing is, seems like SE is offering some money to communities to help them grow. Maybe SA aprons and shirts would work though. Pretty cool.

But then win once, and what's next?

I hadn't considered that mostly because I don't think it's likely I would win. :)

A cash(ish) prize might also help bring in outsiders.

² :p

but i still think it would be fun

While we'd all like SA aprons, I don't think the outside world would care as much.

i would wear that apron to school

just a thought: is it fair that 'amateurs' and 'real chefs' compete?

well, if it gets to be that big, we could have two leagues, but that's getting waaaay ahead of ourselves.

:)

it was just because i've read somewhere on the site that there are people that have had a restaurant etc

maybe, if someone wins 3 consec times, he can't play the fourth?

but that's kinda lame

yeah, there are a couple of pros, but it's mostly just heavy ameuters

@Mien, I don't think that we can do the competition based on the taste of the dishes. We can't get a jury panel to taste all dishes. I'm certainly not sending creme caramel overseas. I think that we should make it based on how much one can learn from the post.

I didn't really meant the taste :)

The post should describe the "making of", complete with what went wrong and how the cook solved the problems.

tbh, i dont have any exact ideas