Changes for the good
• There’s now a way to easily navigate back to the board/tag/community after reading a thread (link at top of page)
• The read state is *finally* easily discernible
• I can more easily determine when a thread was started (really, who wants to read a 7-y-o thread?)

Persistent drawbacks
• I don’t often use the search capability, but from the comments it appears it is still fubarred
• The huge banners still ensure that I can see only 1 or 2 threads per page.
• I haven’t attempted an OP as I can’t be bothered with muddling through thousands of tags
• The communities have been fractured by the use of tags and the dependence on users to choose the correct ones
• There is still no equivalent to the Community Board; no place to go to see the most current posts.
• Changing the vocabulary from OP to post, post to reply, regional boards to locations, non-regional boards to communities, etc. has certainly not helped the dialogue here
• The profile page still does not show who I am following/who is following me. I find this strange as apparently this info is used to populate my “curated” home page. (BTW—Have you read the threads regarding the pretentiousness of the term “curated” in the last year or so on CH?)

Problems moving forward
• All of these issues were identified in the Beta feedback threads (well over 1000 responses). Those willing to check out Beta are probably the most committed hounds and the most tech savvy as well. Yet you went ahead to production without addressing those issues. You pissed those folks off. SMH.
• Some of the initial responses from TPTB were, frankly, flippant and/or tone deaf. You pissed folks off. SMH.
• You have left an awful lot of negative responses up on Site Talk, and I have not seen most of those responses that were removed so I can’t really speak to the moderation. I have, however, heard many high-value posters have been suspended or banned. You pissed folks off. SMH.

Like many others, I have been mostly following Site Talk and haven’t contributed otherwise. And let’s be honest, there hasn’t been an awful lot of new content to which to respond. Only time will tell if the bedrocks of the community will return (or even *can* return).

I have to respectfully disagree that you understand the use case very well, because at no time did I mention scrolling through the Southeast or New England boards. What I did say (repeatedly, on several feedback threads) is that I could see posts from other locations quite easily on the Community board. Then I could decide whether to read them and, if of interest, follow them.

Now you are asking that I indeed visit a tag and slog through all its posts to see if something is of interest. I don't often wake up in the morning and think "I wonder if that bakery we so enjoyed during last year's vacation to Saratoga, NY is still there/good? Let me see if CH has a Saratoga tag where I can look for a pertinent thread." However, if I was on the old Community board and spotted a thread on "Bakeries in Saratoga?" I could open it and see if Mrs London's is still delivering the goods.

Pat-

Please stop representing http://www.chowhound.com/latest as the equivalent of the previous Community page. There are two major differences:
1) It is a listing of the newest threads added, not the latest threads added or updated. This is a major distinction. As was noted ad nauseum on the Beta feedback threads, many of your regular Hounds used this site to read threads of interest that lived on Boards we did not follow. For instance, if I saw a thread regarding Asheville or Newport restaurants (places I frequently vacation) on Community, I would read them. I didn't want to follow the Southeastern or New England boards, as the majority of threads would be irrelevant to me.
2) I still can't discern what I have read with no new content and what I have never read. Admittedly this is not as much of an issue with the "latest" site, as threads would presumably never reappear there a day or two later.

Agreed. I am going to repost what I posted on one of the Beta feedback threads:
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Here’s how I currently use Chowhound. I navigate to chow.com. I pull down “My Boards” and select the first one. I arrive at that board and quickly and easily determine: a) what new threads have been added since my last visit and b) which threads I’m reading that have new content and c)which threads I am not reading that have new content. I can also see if a thread has been locked.
I start with the “oldest” new content. When I finish reading that thread, I use the “Back to <board name>” button to return to the board, so I can read the next thread. This continues until I’ve read all the new content that interests me.

I then pull down “My Boards,” select the second board and repeat the above process. After I have visited all of my boards, I go to the general Community board and scan through the threads there to see if anything is of interest outside my boards. Then I check my profile to see if any thread I am following has been updated.

It’s easy to navigate. It’s clear what has been read and what has not.

So now I go to Beta. I arrive on a page and there are huge constantly rotating images that will lead me to “communities” or tags. I scroll down to see the new threads. I scroll down a few times to reveal 37 threads. Except it’s not 37. It’s sixteen threads, some of which are repeated 3, 4 or even 8 times. As I scroll, I notice on the right side are big white boxes with “trending locations” (ooh . . . the Pacific Northwest is hot, let me rush there), my tags, my communities and “recently viewed.” Except I haven’t recently viewed any of these threads. In fact I am quite sure I never even visited two of them. And each of these “recently viewed” has update times of anywhere from 1 minute to 5 hours. One of them is the initial post announcing beta is open to everyone which allegedly was updated a minute ago. I click on it and I am taken to yep, that thread that was locked six days ago. The right side has the recipes, editors picks, etc that I always ignored on the old Chow and continue to ignore.

So I pick a thread. I don’t know if it’s never read” gray or no new content gray, but I click it. I read it. I notice one of its tags is “Not About Food.” I click that button, hoping it will return me to all the threads that appear with the Not About Food tag (i.e., what I see on old Chow). I guess it does, but it doesn’t list an awful lot of what is currently appearing on the old site’s NAF board.

So now I want to go to my landing page/homepage or whatever we’re calling it. How do I get there? The Discover button? Nope, that just list communities. Never did figure it out beyond navigating to beta.chowhound.com again.

My head has now exploded once again. Whew that’s a lot of work/thought for very little return.

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The "Recently Viewed" section, while not accurate, has at least improved to show threads I have actually viewed.

If I am seeing what I think I'm seeing, the Live Feed shows the most recently added threads, not the most recently updated threads.

I still cannot discern read with no new comments and never read.

As a resident of the Philadelphia area (more closely aligned to S. Jersey and Delaware; Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware and Chester counties of PA) than most of PA, the concern rgarding the need to follow multiple tags is real.

Also, I lost count of how many times, while adding this addendum, I had to arrow my way around the "Upload a photo" text box.

I saw two very positive posts. One was by a user who has been on the site since 2014. He has 16 pages of posts: 4 posts on Site Talk (at least 1 of which had to do with cookware), 1 post on an LA restaurant, 3 on coffee and tea (about coffeemakers) and every other of the hundreds on Cookware. The other was a first-tme poster who commented on how pretty the new site is and thanking the team for making the recipes more visible.

In other words, Chowhound has not replaced Chow, Chow has replaced Chowhound. The only positives are coming from users who do not use CH as a community in which to discover a far-reaching spectrum of topics. Those of us who miss the Community page, the easy access to/navigation among boards, those of us who fear the fracturing of communities (i.e., Boards) are no longer the target demographic.