Archived Article By Tom Fitzmorris Originally published August 11, 2008 A New Messageboard, After A Year Off "Talk Food With Tom" Returns; 186 Correspondents Register On First Day For the first time in over a year, I have an interactive messageboard about the local dining scene. It's address is http://www.nomenu.com/TalkFood. If you read this early enough, you can be the first reader to post something there. Back in 1996, I began moderating a food messageboard on a local website. Its dynamics were unlike anything I ever did before, bringing the wisdom of crowds to bear on my reportage of the food scene. It moved to an overambitious site in the heat of the dot-com boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s, and became immensely popular--easily outstripping the traffic on any other local food messageboard. That continued after the board moved back to the original site. My involvement ended when the board was taken over by cranks, and the management of the site saw nothing especially wrong with that. The new Talk Food With Tom messageboard will try to pick up where we left off before the chaos broke out. It's open to any question or comment, opinion or news about the New Orleans dining scene. I'll post new items and answer questions daily. (It's very clear that a moderated board generates much higher-quality material,. and more of it to boot.) I'll be sure to keep the personal invective and other non-food matter down to about zero. As in the past, I will  manage the board the way an editor manages a magazine. He makes the most of the best that's offered to him, edits out problems in content and style, and prevents the publication of obvious garbage. I can't help it: I'm a long-time magazine editor (former editor-in-chief at New Orleans Magazine, Figaro, and CityBusiness), and I think this approach is as valid for this medium as it is for more traditional media. The widely held idea that anyone should be allowed to say anything at all, anonymously, is what makes most messageboards worthless. This one won't be. The main difference is that we have the luxury of unlimited space, so we don't have to cut anything back to make it fit. I was amazed that 186 people registered to use the forum in the first twenty-four hours it was up there. Please come by, register, and be part of the renaissance. © 2008 Tom Fitzmorris. All rights reserved. news@nomenu.com