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'.

[Syncro]

Well, the add topic thingie doesn't work, so the cheeze thingies will be crushed...but think of it as ABC...

[Admin Moderator]

I love it! hahaha, thanks, that's a keeper.
check our page

[Jim Robinson]

Hey, there's a bug on page 65,239.

[Jen]

Hehehehehe

There's an even better one that I found a long time ago but I don't remember where it is. If I find it, I'll ping you.

[Jen]

65,239

OMG! Slow night? No trolls to ZOT? ;-)

[viaveritasvita]

Read-later bump

[Admin Moderator]

That's a tough call since this topic is so heated, as you must know. I'd probably start with a ping list. Maybe say on the thread, 'I'm starting a ping list on the Schiavo threads, if you'd like to be on this list, let me know. Likewise, I might be freepmailing you with discussion points. Again, let me know if you'd like to receive these mails. If you want off this list, let me know'

If you do something like that, upfront, you can get a list of people willing to be added. It's important you respect the wishes of posters, and if they ask to be removed from your lists, you should respectfully remove them. I know from personal experience, a person can just be on too many ping lists, and it really can clog your 'my comments' page. It's important to work with everyone. If you're friendly with certain posters, it shouldn't be a problem freepmailing them.

[hellinahandcart]

We're also not allowed to post full text from the Onion or anything from Conde Nast. That's a recent development.

Not that much from Conde Nast would make it here anyway.

[Admin Moderator]

Please do. As you can tell, we do have a sense of humor.

[putupon]

Breaking News - Not every story is breaking news. Breaking news should be news that affects most of us. There are some exceptions.

A perfect example of an "exception" would be when putupon post his opinion, which is always profound enough to be conidered Breaking News.

[DefCon]

oh yes it does

[Admin Moderator]

Exactly!

[Admin Moderator]

You found it too?

[Admin Moderator]

Thursdays seem to be a big troll day, go figure.

[Admin Moderator]

If you still have the mail in question, can you forward it to my freepmail account? This discussion should probably be handled off thread. I can dig into our records, etc.

[Unknown Freeper]

Can you please please please do something about people who post a thread without searching. It takes nothing to search. Yet sometimes, we see the same thing posted three or four times. (I know you Mods do well with purging the dups but it is annoying to see them.)

Also, some people should be zotted/restricted/strung up for abusing the Breaking News sidebar. Putting non-breaking news in Breaking News causes real stories to be moved down the list (leading to duplicates of stories in breaking news which is sooooo annoying.)

[Jim Robinson]

Clue: If your FReepmail is a personal attack, or is abusive, insulting or profane, then it is unwanted.

[humblegunner]

putupon (The most humble of all FReepers, p (no /sarcasm required).)

Hmmph!