Free Republic Article Search

Bahits.com ^ | 01/25/2014 | Doug Weems

[FreeAtlanta]

I have developed a bookmarklet that can help you find if an article has already been posted on Free Republic. You put it in your favorites bar or save it as a bookmark. While reading a news article or web page, you click the "FR Search" link. A window opens with the FR search page and with a good guess what the article title is.

Screen shots of me using "FR Search" to see if an article was posted.
I have tested it with Chrome 32 and IE 11.

Here are the results of testing 20 articles posted on FR. I clicked on the first 20 posts on tag/*/index. Two were not articles, so I added the next two posts.
From the post, I went to the linked article. I used the "FR Search" bookmarklet tool to see if the article could be found on Free Republic.

Article	link	Did FR Search Find Posted Article?	If no, why?
Pentagon: U.S. Not Capable of Detecting Foreign Nuke Threats (US unclassified report)	http://freebeacon.com/pentagon-u-s-not-capable-of-detecting-foreign-nuke-threats/	Yes
NOAA Winter Prediction	http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20131121_winteroutlook.html	No	Actual article title is "Drought likely to persist or develop in the Southwest, Southeastern U.S. this winter"
‘Blind’ Man Caught in Disability Fraud After Seen Driving a Speed Boat	http://freebeacon.com/blind-man-caught-in-disability-fraud-after-seen-driving-a-speed-boat/	Yes
Wal-Mart to cut 2,300 workers from Sam's Club stores	http://www.nbcnews.com/business/wal-mart-cut-2-300-workers-sams-club-stores-2D11994626	Yes
chimera global holdings ?	http://chimeraglobalholdings.com/	Yes	*a wierd one, but found it!
Testimonies from ex-Roman Catholic Priests	http://carm.org/testimonies-ex-roman-catholic-priests	Yes
The Refreshing Li Na	http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/tennis/li-na-gives-the-best-australian-open-victory-speech-ever/story-fnkrowp0-1226810463530	No	actual title "Li Na gives the 'best Australian Open victory speech ever'"
Tulsa (Oklahoma) Man Accused of Taking Toddler on Drunken Horse Ride	http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/crimewatch/tulsa-man-accused-of-taking-toddler-on-drunken-horse-ride/article_510f7f2c-82cd-11e3-81c5-001a4bcf6878.html	Yes
Good Samaritan paralyzed in Myrtle Beach purse snatching settles with Kmart, looks ahead	http://www.kansascity.com/2014/01/25/4774564/good-samaritan-paralyzed-in-myrtle.html	Yes
Aide: Political Logic of Angering GOP Base Over Immigration So Close to Midterm Election "Baffling"	http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/2014/01/house-gop-aide-political-logic-of.html	No	actual title 'House GOP Aide: Political Logic of Angering Party's Base Over Immigration So Close to Low-turnout Midterm Election "Baffling"'
China on the radar, India invites Japan for Indo-US Malabar naval war games	http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/China-on-the-radar-India-invites-Japan-for-Indo-US-Malabar-naval-war-games/articleshow/29368706.cms	Yes
Schumer: Democrats Enable Tea Party to Bash Government	http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2014/01/23/schumer-democrats-enable-tea-party-to-bash-government/?mod=WSJBlog	Yes
FReepers: We need your help to keep the lights on!! [FReepathon thread XIII]	http://freerepublic.com/%5Ehttps://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/	No	some things are self explanatory - actual title, "Donate to Free Republic"
Pray for our American Heroes		No	not an article
The New Ammunition That Has Gun Owners Drooling	http://thelibertydigest.com/2014/01/24/the-new-ammunition-that-has-gun-owners-drooling/	Yes
St. Pete police shoot German Shepherd while trying to apprehend a man	http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/st-pete-police-shoot-german-shepherd-while-trying-to-apprehend-a-man	Yes
Caption This: What is Lincoln saying to Obama?	http://www.thelookingspoon.com/conservative-lol/106-tls-original-humor/5155-caption-this-what-is-lincoln-saying-to-obama.html	Yes
Religious Statues Vandalized At 2 Churches In Vineland	http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2014/01/24/2-south-jersey-churches-vandalized-overnight/	Yes	found 2 posted
Chuck Schumer Calls For The IRS To Stop The Tea Party	http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/012414-687587-chuck-schumer-targets-the-tea-party.htm	No	hmm, the title tag of the page is different than the article title "Chuck Schumer Asks The IRS To Target And Stop The Tea Party - Investors.com "
Man accused of killing police dog sentenced to 35 years	http://www.thestate.com/2014/01/06/3192806/man-accused-of-killing-police.html>http://www.thestate.com/2014/01/06/3192806/man-accused-of-killing-police.html>http://www.thestate.com/2014/01/06/3192806/man-accused-of-killing-police.html	Yes
Afghanistan-US deal 'hinges on Taliban peace talks'	http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25893296	Yes
[Why I Am Catholic] Sec John Kerry Gets Earful From The Vatican SecState Regarding The HHS Mandate	http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yimcatholic/2014/01/secretary-john-kerry-gets-an-earful-from-the-vatican-secstate-regarding-the-hhs-mandate.html	No	Post title different from article;

5 out of 20 posts were not found. 4 had different titles on Free Republic than on the article. One had a different article title in it's title bar than the article. That isn't too bad! I can't do anything to find articles posted under different titles, so hopefully, most people keep the original titles to make searching easier.

From time to time I will post updates to the tool on my blog. (This is version 1.2) I hope many of you will use it both for checking an article before posting and for finding threads on articles to see what Freepers are saying. If you leave a comment on this thread, I will ping you on updates.

thanks, FrAtl

Also, leave comments or suggestions to improve the tool either here or on my blog. The bookmarklet is ad free, but my blog has a few google ads. If you click one or two, it helps. :-)

[FreeAtlanta]

Bookmarklets can be really helpful. Let me know what you think.

[FreeAtlanta]

ping

[prisoner6]

Looks good! Will try it later tonight, thanks!

[TomServo]

I never use full titles when searching for articles.

Just a significant word (or two) from the title..

Works 99% of the time.

[WXRGina]

Hey, thanks very much, F.A.! :-)

[FreeAtlanta]

Most welcome! If you find pages that have problems, reply back here, through FRmail, or on my blog.

[skinkinthegrass]

;-)

[FreeAtlanta]

Thanks Tom,

I do the same with the tool. I try to trim off the newspaper or site titles, some of the characters that cause problems and then trim the overall title down to a few words.

The biggest problems I have found are when the article gets posted to FR with additions at the beginning of the title or changes - including typos.

[TomServo]

Maybe you can regex parentheses out too - for those who insist on editorializing them..

[FreeAtlanta]

That is a great idea. I will work on it tonight or tomorrow. Right now, the kids want to watch a movie we rented.

[Mark]

Can’t I just post a thread asking others in a search?(/Humor)

[SunTzuWu]

Bookmark.

[harpu]

Hmmmm...4later

[FreeAtlanta]

Thanks Everyone!

I just updated to version 1.3, I added a bonus Bookmarklet on the blog that will open your “My Comments” in a popup, and I fixed the “Reply To All” to not duplicate the Freepers it finds on the thread.

This update has Tom’s suggestion about taking out everything between [and] so that people can continue to customize their titles without messing up the searching. Unfortunately, if a real title has the blocks, the words in the blocks will be removed. I don’t think it will be much of a problem, but it it does let me know.

thanks,

FRAtl

[Bon of Babble]

Works beautifully on my MacPro. Went straight into the bookmark bar and worked the first time.

Tested it with “Justin Bieber” article, LOL, and it worked great.

[raybbr]

Tech ping

[ConservativeMind]

Thank you!

[cynwoody]

Nice work!

For the hard cases, you can resort to Google. It's pretty good at staying on top of the latest FR content.

Example:

site:freerepublic.com intitle:"Article Search"

I just tried the above, and it returned the current thread and a page from 2004.

[SunkenCiv]

This is a great idea!

[Berlin_Freeper]

Hello,

How can I COMPLETELY remove your bookmarklets from my computer?