VANITY: Cluttering the Forum with Duplicate Threads

Me | 01/22/2010 | Charles

[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:

1. people thinking they get special credit for being "first to post", so multiple people post a breaking story.
2. people who are too lazy to search
3. People who think they are too important to search.
4. bloggers who think that if they blog an article and post their blog it counts as a "different story"
5. People who want to comment, but feel their comments are lost in a 100+ comment thread, so they find the same story in a different paper and post it as if it is "new".

For these and other reasons, FreeRepublic is being inundated with multiple threads on the same story. While a live thread existed for the Scott Brown election, there were over a half-dozen posts to say he won; another over half-dozen posts saying dems would push health care anyway. There were 6 posts of youtube videos "Hitler reacts to Scott Brown's victory". 8 posts about Pelosi not having the votes to pass the senate plan. Too many posts to count on pelosi using reconciliation. Over a dozen posts on the Supreme court ruling on CFR.

This is BAD, for three reasons:

1. it takes up space and clutters the board. Each thread has a slot, and each page fits a limited number of items, and if the same story is up 6 times, it bumps other things off the front page. Is this why the servers crash? I don't know, but it can't help.
2. it makes duplicative effort. People don't know which thread to use to discuss, discussion happens in multiple threads, so we don't see all of our other freeper comments. Arguments get rehashed, good information gets lost because it's in one thread but another thread ends up taking over the discussion.
3. it makes it near impossible to find information later. You search for some story to find the comment on it you wanted to quote, and you get a dozen hits, and don't know which thread the comments are in.

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:

1. Report all duplicates.
2. DOn't post into duplicates, except to point out it is a duplicate, and provide a link to the place where the major discussion is taking place.

Duplicates are useful to people who post them, because other freepers comment in the duplicates, giving them legitimacy. If we simply ignore the duplicates, especially the blog duplicates where the blog ads no value, we might discourage them.

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.

[GQuagmire]

CharlesWayneCT Vanity Hall of Fame Thread

[Peter Horry]

“How about in braille?”

Post one and let’s see how it feels, er, do we need a special monitor.

[matginzac]

Yeah, no dupes because then Free Republic WILL RUN OUT OF ROOM TO POST THREADS! C’mon. people - get with the program!

[Lazamataz]

My thread was LOCKED AS A DUPLICATE!! !OMG I can’t stop laughing... LOL... Admin Moderator totally made my day with that one... STILL laughing.....

[LegendHasIt]

Personally I don’t mind the duplicate threads.

Some of us don’t spend our whole lives here updating every every few minutes. A lot if useful information ‘falls off the screen’ for those of us who have real lives.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I felt that way for a while, but realised that for every story you DON’T miss, since it was duplicated on the front page, that’s one story you DID miss, because it got bumped off the front page so the duplicate could take it’s place.

If you are serious that you only look at, say, the 50 posts on the front page, then if someone has 6 duplicates of something, that’s 5 other stories that you never got to see because they were all bumped off the front page.

And of course, if everybody duplicated every story to keep it on the front page, it would be like a post-war, trying to see who could keep things up front.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Of course, the solution already exists for duplicates that rise to the level where the mods want to stop them. I specifically mentioned that.

And I’m not actually suggesting anything to the Moderators.

I’m trying instead to see if I can work up some self-discipline. While the mods may not care about some duplicates, I doubt they want to actively encourage them, in my opinion they are tolerated, not encouraged.

So I’m trying to see if some peer pressure might prod our community into cleaning up it’s own act. Like a neighborhood might institute a litter-cleanup policy, rather than pestering government to send crews to clean the streets.

[aMorePerfectUnion]

Let me try again...

You can eliminate all duplicate posts forever with this one setting:

Click Here to Eliminate Duplicates

You're welcome!

[McGruff]

Ignoring all the wise *ss comments this is out of control. If I see another Sarah Palin supports John MCain thread I'm going to reply with the other 100 I've seen. The worst offenders are the post and run bloggers.

[RGSpincich]

Too many vanity threads. But what the hell...

[dayglored]

> My thread was LOCKED AS A DUPLICATE!! !OMG I can’t stop laughing... LOL... Admin Moderator totally made my day with that one... STILL laughing.....

The Admin Mods have an excellent, yet subtle, sense of humor.

[DManA]

I think it show there is a healthy interest in this site. Would you prefer if due to a lack of interest some good articles went unnoticed?

[Carley]

It would help if we had a way to delete our own threads when it’s apparent it is a duplicate.

It would help too if we had an edit function so we wouldn’t have to repeat a thread to correct a spelling or grammatical error.

[1rudeboy]

If you view through the (Latest)"Articles" tab, instead of "Activity," or "Comments," then you can run through a day's worth of threads in about twenty minutes. If you find one that you wish to comment upon, then a "bttt" can mark your place until you return.

Now that I think about it, this problem has something to do with the demise of "bttt" as a tool, and the natural tension between the folks who see FR as a chat forum, and those who see it as a news forum.

Don't get me started on the folks trying to turn FR into Twitter . . . grrrr.

[My hearts in London - Everett]

I agree with just about all you've said. I think many FReepers (and especially relatively new FReepers) are not using search before posting threads. Sometimes the duplicate threads are right after each other, so you can tell the poster didn't even attempt a search! I search under every topic word I think an article could be posted under before posting an article I've found. I think, perhaps, original posters are, at times, not using key word designators to make the use of search more productive. Posters making comments on an original thread should make a point to add key words they think will make a search better.

I agree that posters to a thread could post a link to the original thread. Perhaps then posters would know their thread is not going to receive the hits they hoped for and learn to do a more extensive search before posting threads.

This is a huge forum. I think mods are extremely busy keeping up with moderating inappropriate comments, etc. to keep track of every duplicate thread. I do agree that 4, 5, 6 duplicate threads take up too much space on front pages of News/Activism and General/Chat and are annoying. I usually go to the first thread posted, denying subsequent posters my view.

[My hearts in London - Everett]

I do believe that’s been done also! :~D

[GQuagmire]

[CharlesWayneCT]

No. I agree that it’s a good thing that people are excited, and want to post and discuss news stories.

In my opinion though, we would get more value out of the discussion if there were fewer duplicates so discussions were kept together better.

I picture it like the difference between having a gathering of a hundred people discussing an issues and airing all of their ideas, vs that hundred people breaking up into 10 different rooms of 10 people each, and having the same discussion.

The 1st means we will all hear the best solutions, and we can get expert knowledge if we have one. The 2nd means a few get some expert knowledge, some get a so-called expert who turns out to have bad information, and we just don’t get the synergy of putting all of our heads together.

Sometimes this is really clear, like when a breaking story gets posted a dozen times, and it turns out the story was wrong. Someone posts the real information to the original thread, but 9 other threads have freepers who don’t hear the correction, unless a good freeper takes the time to visit all the threads and posts the correct information — a lot of work.

[poobear]

The mods already lock important threads that are duplicates. Then there are those that are posted so far apart, many workers and lurkers only have time to scroll a few hours of threads. Doesn’t bother me unless it’s gossip threads, then I click news/activism, that filters them out.

Cheers!

[Tijeras_Slim]

Post one and let’s see how it feels

It's all good until somebody posts a Helen Thomas pic.