It's time for a posting refresher course (Welcome Newbies)

Admin Moderator | October 27, 2003 | Admin Moderator

[Admin Moderator]

Hi all,

It's time again for another posting refresher course. Thanks for your cooperation.

Only one these topics will show up in the sidebars, posting to multiple topics will still only show one topic.

Activism/Chapters - Activism, protests, news and business of Free Republic Chapters. Freep this poll should be placed in vanity. General news stories about activism should be place in news. After action reports from Freeps are allowed here.

Announcements – Notifications of Activism events, FR business

Breaking News - Not every story is breaking news. Breaking news should be news that affects most of us. There are some exceptions. If there is a hot current event happening, check breaking news. Most likely, it's there already, please check first, then use our search function. (explained below)

Editorial - Editorials are opinions. Some vanities, if well written and thought out can be considered editorial material.

Extended News - Extended news is for stories which have been posted previously and have updated or newer information.

Free Republic - This categories is reserved for Free Republic business.

Front Page News - Front page is for stories which are not breaking news, but would be found on the front page of a newspaper.

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These are just some of the topics that you may use two or more. Do not go out of your way to put in more topics just to try to get more views for your thread. Doing so makes the topics less usable for everyone. Also, do not list every state on your thread. It is unnecessary. Please limit the state topics to those states that the story pertains to.

Business/Economy - Business, industry, financial, markets, trade, banking, budget, debt, taxes and economy news.

Constitution/Conservatism - Discussion of conservatism and conservative principles and issues.

Crime/Corruption – News and discussion of crime, corruption government abuse, power grabs, and scandal.

Culture/Society - Discussion of health, education, welfare, drugs, abortion, environment, housing, unions, employment, social security, religion, arts, humanity, sports, and other cultural and societal issues.

Foreign Affairs - News and discussion of international politics, foreign affairs, diplomacy, national security, war, military, defense and armed forces issues.

Government - News and discussion of all branches of government, departments, agencies, law, policy, legislation, processes and judiciary.

Miscellaneous - Anything which doesn't fit into another category.

News/Current Events - News and discussion of current events.

Philosophy - Discussions of philosophy and ideology.

Political Humor/Cartoons - Funny stuff

Politics/Elections - Discussions of politics and elections.

Unclassified - Articles awaiting re-classification.

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Vanities and General Interest.

Your Opinion/Questions - All non-sourced non-news threads are posted here. This doesn’t mean your one thought is a thread by itself. Lately, we have been seeing articles posted that should be comments made on the main article. Your comment/vanity article will be pulled or moved to General Interest. Vanities should be limited to the mission of Free Republic.

General interest – Is for discussions of news and interest topics unrelated to the news forum. We will move articles unrelated to the news forum here.

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To avoid duplicate posts, please search before posting.

SEARCH

The best method to search is to pick a key word or two from the title. If the article you are posting is, “Agency to probe alleged spousal abuse of Terri Schiavo", start with 'Schiavo' for the key word. If it is a hot topic, you might want to use two or more keywords, in this case, try ‘Schiavo’ and ‘Terri’. For an effective search, select 'match all words' and select 'order by post time'.

[Admin Moderator]

Reference threads:

The Ultimate Sidebar Management Thread

Regarding Terri Schiavo Stories, the BN Sidebar, vanities, and newcomers

Knock it off with the "funny" vanities. We've got enough of the funnies in the news already.

Please do not post photos or links to photos or other personal info on the Kobe Bryant Accuser

Do NOT post ads, offers, solicitations or links to pages that offer merchandise, etc.

[yonif]

bttt

[11th Earl of Mar]

If you don't stop these vanity posts, I am going to report you to the Admin Moderator for abuse of the forum.

[Blood of Tyrants]

You forgot to mention that articles from certain publications MUST be excerpted and linked. Also a link to the HTML Sandbox is good for newbies.

[Sabertooth]

Only one these topics will show up in the sidebars, posting to multiple topics will still only show one topic.

Activism/Chapters - Activism, protests, news and business of Free Republic Chapters. Freep this poll should be placed in vanity. General news stories about activism should be place in news. After action reports from Freeps are allowed here.

Announcements Ð Notifications of Activism events, FR business

Breaking News - Not every story is breaking news. Breaking news should be news that affects most of us. There are some exceptions. If there is a hot current event happening, check breaking news. Most likely, it's there already, please check first, then use our search function. (explained below)

Any chance of making these three sidebars completely separate?

[ChadsDad]

lready posted

[ConservativeMan55]

Thanks for all your hard work!

[sourcery]

This sort of information really needs to be available on a "Posting Policies, Rules and Buidelines" page.

[Texaggie79]

General interest – Where fun threads go to die...

[Ciexyz]

btt

[sourcery]

Buidelines

Ack! Guidelines!

[Admin Moderator]

John would have to do that.

[GO65]

some instructions on what "pings" and "bumps" are would be helpfull. I've been here a few weeks and still haven't figured that out.

[Admin Moderator]

HTML Sandbox

Important Legal Notice:
LAT/WP vs Free Republic Settles
Free Republic has settled the alleged copyright infringement suit brought by The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post and has agreed not to post full text articles from their publications or any of their related subsidiaries and affiliates. Please do not post full text from these sources.

Any full text articles from LAT or WP or subsidiaries or affiliates will be deleted in compliance with this settlement. Click to see a copy of the Amended Final Judgment in this case.

[Admin Moderator]

I've sent your request to Jim, spelling corrected ;)

[Admin Moderator]

Thanks for the kudos.

[Jen]

Some other good threads for newcomers:

HTML Boot Camp

Fifth Edition of the Lexicon of FreeRepublic * * A helpful FR dictionary for newcomers * *

FReeper Photo Album

[smith288]

General interest – Where fun threads go to die...

Thread Blackhole...

I have often thought "Why aint anyone seeing my bumps???" only to find where an admin mod sent it... *sigh*

[1rudeboy]

The reason that the "Activism/Chapters" field gets regularly abused is that most do not read the field descriptions that follow each field on the checklist. Add to that the fact that the word "activism" itself is too broad, and you have your problem.

[Admin Moderator]

A ping is a flag that someone posts because they feel you might be interested in that article. You will see it in 'my comments'.

A bump is just a place marker to advance the thread back up to the top of the latest comments page. (bttt is sometime used - bump to the top)