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.

[mnehring]

One thing I believe a lot of people overlook is adding keywords to posts. The search is driven by keywords first, so if they aren’t added, articles may not show up immediately in search.

Keywords should contain major words of title like names, events, as well as words that may help you find the article (eg banglist for gun related articles.)

[HospiceNurse]

See earlir thread.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

"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."

And there you have it in a nutshell.

[Cyber Liberty]

2. people who are too lazy to search

I can top that...I'm too lazy to even post a story because I know somebody else will do it in a matter of minutes. FReepers are everywhere.

[ßuddaßudd]

Seriesly, here’s my clutternig contribution.
Dupe threads ensure more people see the important issues.

[CharlesWayneCT]

Then there are those that are posted so far apart, many workers and lurkers only have time to scroll a few hours of threads.

But scrolling time is really about scrolling "count" (meaning it's not that you have time to scroll a "few hours", you have time to scroll through "x number" of threads).

If you can scroll through 50 threads, and 5 are duplicates, that's 5 new threads you didn't get to see because of the duplicates.

Also, if you don't read the duplicates, you still read the one reposted duplicate, which means one other story you didn't read. Since you don't really know that the duplicate story was more important than the story you didn't read because of the duplicate that you did read, having it duplicated wasn't really a value to you.

For your case, a duplicate is only valuable if first, the duplicate that you read is more important than the original story you didn't get to read instead; second, the duplicate isn't a story that you already read the previous time you were on the board.

I specifically avoided suggestions that would drive work to the board owners. But one way to handle the idea of limited-time readers getting "important" stories is to add a story ranking, and to allow people to sort on story rank.

We already have the "breaking news" sidebar for stories deemed important, so the most important stories can be found. And if you browse by comment, you'll see the latest comments, which sometimes associate with the more popular and therefore "better" threads.

I don't doubt that some duplicates are of stories that aren't breaking news, but are important enough that we want them to re-appear. However, other than for breaking news, in my opinion the value of having discussion of a story contained in one place outweighs the value of the story re-appearing so other people read the STORY.

I guess that goes back to what another poster said about dueling purposes. Is the point to get the latest news, or is the point to DISCUSS the latest news? If the point is getting the news, duplicating the news helps get it out more. But if the point is discussing the news, I think it better to have discussion together in one place, than repeating the discussion multiple times.

Imagine there is a live thread about an important story. You are following the live thread because you are interested, and because you don't have a lot of time, that's really all you can do at once.

Now, what happens to you if someone has an important development on the story that is discussed in the live thread, but instead of posting in the live thread, they make their own thread to post? If nobody in the live thread notices, a lot of people who were most interested in the story won't get that information, because it didn't get put in the existing thread.

[Responsibility2nd]

Your points about bloggers are so true.

 

I changed my tagline a week or two ago in response to these

 

LOOK AT ME!!!

LOOK AT ME PIMP MY BLOG!!!

 

Attention whores.

 

I see the bloggers as a bigger problem than duplicates 

 

[Cyber Liberty]

You’re a wild man, Laz.

[sniper63]

"How about in braille?"

Can't do Braille on my computer the monitor gets all smudged with finger prints.

[CharlesWayneCT]

I’ve pretty much abandoned my blog, not on purpose or anything. But I like commenting here, and reading what other people say. And I have my opinion column in the paper when I want to say something original.

So my time and inclination to blog has fallen off dramatically.

Plus, it really has gotten to the point where almost anything clever you might think of to say about a story has already been said by someone in a more popular blog.

When I started blogging, I actually filled a niche in the local politics (what I called the “sane response” niche).

But now, I find that even my “twist on the news” thoughts are posted by someone somewhere.

And it’s just a lot more fun to participate in this community than trying to build my own in a blog.

[Gothmog]

I totally agree about the bloggers, it gets boring scanning through duplicate stories that are posted 1 day, 2 days, 3 days, etc. after the actual news broke w/ no new information.

[sportutegrl]

What about multiple posts?

[sportutegrl]

What about multiple posts?

[hennie pennie]

Are you aware that there is a very long commentary by Admin Moderator which was posted here several months ago which instructed freepers to PLEASE be kind & polite to bloggers, and to avoid rudely chasing away potential new members?

Mod Lecture Series- Freeper Community Update

I do NOT want to paraphrase what Admin Moderator so eloquently wrote, and I don't want to quote just a tiny few sentences from such a long article posting.

I strongly advise everyone to read their instructions which were very clearly put forth last year.

[don-o]

Thanks for the tutorial.

[GeronL]

lol

[RGSpincich]

The suggestions put forth on this thread compliment our “instructions” as you put it.

[truthkeeper]

I think there already is a thread about multiple threads....

LOL...I just spewed!

[b4its2late]

LOL! I personally like the "I'd hit it" posts.....

[hennie pennie]

Admin Mod was so clearcut, concise and articulate that I almost called the instructions set forth in their posting, “Orders.” SO SORRY I OFFENDED YOU.