The dog and cat food experience forums have gotten out of control.  I'm getting the impression there just is no longer the interest to keep them organized so people can quickly search through.  So, I'm thinking of putting my feet up on my desk, relaxing, chucking the rules, and letting you all have a free for all.  Why should I worry?

I am with OF ..I do not know if you CAN lock them. But if you can , maybe that would be best so it would be easier to search the forums....I still tend to look at this area when I come up with a need to add some dry even moist food to my dogs homecooked and it's hard and frustrating reading the cross chat when one is just looking for the information on dog or cat foods. In fact maybe just chuck it all and don't even be a moderator. I think you may just be the only one and why should it all fall on you...I dunno but if it were me, I would lock many areas.

Hey, I'm blonde too and I resemble that remark
Seriously, JustMe, I think you should just chuck the rules and take a load off yourself.  I think these forums were originally set up to create a database per se of where the bad food and bad food experiences were (along with the good food/experiences).  Since that proved to be inefficient to do and we now know the bad food is EVERYWHERE the forums have just done a natural migration into a larger content of posts.  I know DB tried to put together some statistics but got discouraged about it, so it was never continued.

I wouldn't want to see any of the topics locked though, as I think it's important to continually get fresh information on the foods and experiences.  I've referred back to lots of different foods to find info for friends and their pets, too.  I'm glad they were started and hope they can be continued.

Hmm, that's a hard one to answer.  The Wellness canned cat food thread has been invaluable to me, but it's kind of the exception since we put sooo many posts on there.  Then today I was so excited about that Grandma Lucy's food, I wanted to use the new thread to discuss aspects of it, without having had any experience with it.

I guess I would like to see all those threads remain open for posts so we can catch problems (like the recent Wellness cat dry food particles), but just loosen or drop the rules.

Maybe post a statement as part of the title to the thread - Please Stay on Topic With This Thread!  Then any regulars reading the posts could help steer the discussion back with "gentle reminders" if we see it veering off course.

There were several reasons we started these forums:

Obviously, because of the pet food recalls.

We envisioned an early-warning system of sorts since we couldn't depend on the FDA or the PFI to let us know there was a problem with pet food.  A forum where we could easily find current and past information on food we were feeding or wished to feed without searching through pages and pages of posts.

We wanted to create a database trying to determine if certain areas of the country were more affected by the recalls than other areas.

(I'm not locking the forums.)

Yes, JustMe, thank you for all your hard work in keeping those threads up.  I sure wouldn't want to have that job since we all tend to wander off topic quite easily here. 

I think the rules had their place during the recalls, but I think we can try to police ourselves on them now.  I would like to see new threads continue to be added as new products come out though.  It's a great way to see what is new out there.  We can start the threads if you want to just have the whole segment revert to standard thread format. 

Yes, Thanks for all the hard work you have put in JustMe!

JustMe, thankyou for all your hard work.

I do check the dog food experience forum quite a bit. I home cook but still check the forum to see what new foods there are, experiences people are having, etc. because if an emergency comes up; I might have to go back to commercial food.  It is also good for an early alarm system - 

Katie