I read the Serious Eats blog every day. It's mostly silly, but occasionally, a good post shows up.
My problem with the site is their love of the the National Pork Board. Not only do they kiss up to this sponsor, they also have three or more huge and obnoxious ads on the Serious Eats front page. Distracting to say the least. This in not a problem for me; the best browsers (Firefox and Opera) make it very easy to block these ads.
When they do these kiss-up posts, they turn comments off. Why? Well, how likely is it that someone will comment "Yes! I love the National Pork Board!" And how likely is it that the comments would tend more towards "I hate these ads, please discontinue them with all possible haste?"
How can I enjoy a thought provoking post like "Crunchy or Soggy Cereal?" with all that pork?
I get it. I love pork. I eat it all the time. I don't need to be told how to cook it. Do we even need a National Pork Board? Until they start sponsoring my site, the answer is no.
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Food thoughts from Puerto Rico
2 comments:
Hola, Lou: Adam here from Serious Eats. You're right. Turning off the comments was my fault. It was boneheaded. And we're rethinking the sponsor shout-outs. That's not to say that they'll disappear completely, but we're rethinking how they're formatted, etc. And, in the future, the comments on those will be open.
The site is a mix between silly and serious, as you say, but I'd hope there's enough serious on there that you can find something interesting to read or talk about.
Adam,
I'm happy to see that you respond to feedback, and improve the site based on it.
Silly isn't always a bad thing, and yes, there's plenty of good stuff on Serious Eats,
enough to get me to visit at least daily.
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