Posted on 05/11/2011 9:44:13 AM PDT by Responsibility2nd
As more and more FReepers (old and new alike) post articles, they really need to pay attention to what they are doing. I know there is a need to excerpt many articles, but remember - you have up to 300 words or no more than 1/2 of the article if it is less than 300 words.
May I make some basic suggestions when excerpting? In addition to the above mentioned FR guidelines, please copy and paste the "who-what-when..." of the article. Earlier today, someone posted an article about a student getting arrested at school for an item found in his equipment bag. The FReeper failed at excerpting and did not even mention what that item was. Was that due to rudeness or laziness? I don't know.
Use snips if you need to. Oftentimes relevant and important info is found deep inside the article. Or maybe at the end. Post that, if you please.
Less than 8?
300 words are great to start a good discussion. Those 300 words don't have to be from the top of the article, they can be 300 words you found interesting from the article.
Of course excepting all the uhs, buts, and ands from an 0bama speech won't give you 300 words.
Really?
It is possible to post more than ten words on
I think it is great if I post ten words.
(Excerpt) Read more at mytotallyawesomewonderfulamazingblog.blogspot.com
Rather than putting the emphasis on how much is or isn’t excerpted, the initiator of a thread can help the readers even more by using Comment #1 to summarize what they think is important about the story they have linked.
Two of the most irritating posting habits around FR:
1. Links to articles with no description of what is contained in the article.
2. Even worse, links to videos with no description of the subject matter and value of the video. You can’t scan a video. I almost never follow video links unless there is some description of what is in the video.
Those two can be included in either the heading to a thread or in comments of a thread.
Many folks have set out with a mission to herd the cats. I have yet to see it done.
Can’t blame ya for trying, though.
Yep. Lol
I also excerpt when it’s not required. Often times a piece will be endless filler. No need for that, eats bandwidth and makes it harder to read too.
Herding cats or herding blogpimps. Its a never ending task.
I plan on linking this thread to future thread posters who use the lazy 10 word excerpt agenda.
Agreed. I’m a news junkie and look at every post on FR. Don’t have time or interest in everything posted. It’s nice when things have descriptions so I don’t miss anything. Don’t have the time to waste following mystery links either.
Of course, if you have given up the article copyright, then it's only your article in the sense of authorship. In the legal sense, you may then still need to excerpt it for posting on FR.
on the line immediately above the article's title?
More advice for posting articles:
Don’t just search the title, also search the major keyword. Often the same article will be posted by ten different sources with ten different titles.
Add keywords. Name of country, government department, main person’s last name. Tons of threads never get seen by those of us that look for articles by keyword.
Go to the original source. If HotMess.Blog posts a short blurb about an article from a newspaper, post the original article, not the blog blurb. I hate that. We all hate that.
Absolutely! I can't watch videos at work--I don't have the software--and I always forget to look at them at home.
If bandwidth of text is an issue I would expect Jim Robinson to address it. Instead I see Jim being against bloggers trying to use Free Republic to drive traffic to their blog.
Are you series? This is hugh.
Meanwhile....I think a moose bit my sister.
Ugh... ;)
BTTT
Another annoyance is linking to the home page of a blog or news source instead of the actual article. A link to a home page will break the next time the blogger posts or the news source goes to a new lead story. Instead, one should click through to the article by itself and then link to that page. Or look around for a an explicitly labeled permalink
and copy its target URL.
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