Posted on 01/22/2010 6:32:30 AM PST by CharlesWayneCT
I'm writing to address a problem of increasing scope -- duplicate threads. Let me be clear: I'm not talking about the rare threads that are blessed by management, and are duplicated because of their critical importance. I'm talking about the everyday duplication of the same story over and over again.
There are several reasons I see for us getting duplicate threads:
This is BAD, for three reasons:
What good are duplicate threads? i've heard it argued that it helps "get the story out". But that presumes that Freepers aren't smart enough to be able to find stories if they aren't on the front page. Plus, it is self-defeating, because to the degree stories NOT on the front page are lost, posting the same story multiple times bumps more different stories off the front page.
Anyway, we have breaking news sidebar for stories deemed important by the moderators. We don't need to duplicate threads in general to get real important news out.
Are there any good reasons for duplicate threads? Well, the freepathon is a good use of duplicate threads, because it does bring it back up top regularly to remind people. But that is a special case, and as I said, I'm not talking about the rare duplicates made and blessed by the site.
I've been thinking this for a while, but it came to a head in the past few weeks, and was made clearer to me first when I tried to find a couple of posts from 2008 and saw how much easier it was to find things then, when there were fewer duplicate threads, than when I tried to find a comment from a month ago.
So, what can we do about it? Well, I know that at some level, this is a moderator issue. THe moderators could, at any time, lock and even delete duplicate threads. I realise that since they are not doing so, it might mean they are happy with duplicates, and therefore I am at cross-purposes with the powers-that-be.
But I don't think so, I think instead the mods are too busy with more important things.
I think that freepers can police ourselves. If enough of us challenged duplicates, we could put a stop to it.
I had some suggestions of ways we can help:
A special point about blog duplicates. I specifically note blogs that essentially find a video, or an article, post the video or article to their blog, and then link the blog here, adding absolutely no value.
But this really also covers blogs that make cursory comments about single articles. Because in the end, that's what Freepers do when they post an article -- they put the article in the body, and their comments on the article in the 1st comment.
So FreeRepublic does NOT need a blogger to post a link to their blog in order to see the blogger comments. The blogger could simply paste their comments into the comments of the thread discussing the news story, so they would be part of the discussion.
The blogs that are valuable are those that find links to several articles and pull a story together from it, or which are movers and shakers whose opinions are themselves considered newsworthy.
But this isn't a vanity about bloggers, which is why I confined my list above to bloggers who provide no value-add to their posts, and are just trying to generate blog hits for their google ad revenue.
And if you have a reason why duplicates are a good thing, please post that as well. I look forward to being enlightened.
I think there already is a thread about multiple threads....
Didn’t somebody already post a thread about this?
Aha! See, I KNEW I'd seen this thread before...
Yes, but this is so important that I thought it had to be posted again. :-)
Please search before posting!
I seem to remember one of your earlier vanity threads taking on a life of its own....
Seems reasonable to me.
Seems reasonable to me.
Seems reasonable to me.
... ;-)
Takes a real pair to make suggestions to the Moderators when you’ve been here less that 10 years. I don’t mean that in a good way either.
Just another thread on threads about duplicate thread threads
Does posting the same article in a different font count? What about posting it in another language, say, for our native experanto speakers? How about in braille?
Good one.
And in Threads 7:22, "Have you not seen the "Obama is a Clinical Narcissist" post every month for the last 24 months?"
Ping the mods that its a dupe and let them act on it.
I must admit, a dozen “Coakely Concedes!” threads with no content was a bit much.
Sometimes I have limited time and can only scroll through the first page and breaking news. I can’t tell you how many stories I would have missed here on FR if not for someone posting a duplicate. However, on hot news days it gets obnoxious.
Good tips on how to cut down on them.
... you can eliminate all duplicate threads by going
here... http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/logoff
And a VANITY thread no less. We have been inundated with way too many vanity threads lately. Someone should post a vanity thread about decreasing the amount of vanity threads.
1) More moderators
2) Give the moderators machetes and temporarily ban persons incapable of searching to see if a article is posted. Flogging blogs with a story that has been posted? Off with their heads.
3) Give the moderators lots of good coffee
4) Tell them to “Knock yourselves out.
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