Way too many duplicates and vanities. Please read - again. (Welcome Newbies)

Volume 3 ^ | 7-27-04 | AM

[Admin Moderator]

We are asking that you all follow these simple posting rules, search before posting, use links and sources when possible, and excerpt as required. Please take a moment to read. We need your cooperation.

Only one of these topics will show up in a sidebar, 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 category 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.

---

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.

Any State or Country - Do not spam every single state or country, please use only those that pertain to your article.

---

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 (Chat)

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

---

Bloggers & Personal

For all of you who have blogs or personal web sites or personal news or opinion or forum sites that you would like to discuss or promote on Free Republic, here's the place to do it.

Our new Bloggers & Personal forum is for:

• Posting from your blog.

• Posting from other peoples blogs.

• Posting your from your personal web site.

• Posting from other peoples personal web sites.

• Promoting your blog.

• Promoting other peoples blogs.

• Promoting your personal web site.

• Promoting your favorite web sites.

• Posting from your favorite outside forums.

• Posting from your favorite lefty forums or sites (DUh and the like).

Click on the "Bloggers & Personal" forum link on the Forums sidebar of the latest posts pages.

Hopefully, this will become a very popular forum for promoting and or discussing blogs and personal opinion/news/forum pages.

---

SEARCH

If it's a breaking news topic, check breaking news first, it's probably already posted.

To avoid duplicate posts, please search before posting. The best method to search is to pick a key word or two from the title. If the article you are posting is, "Funny Video, This Land", start with 'Land' for the key word. If it is a hot topic, you might want to use two or more keywords, in this case, try 'Jib'. For an effective search, select 'match any words' and select 'order by post time'.

Search Land jib

---

And lastly, please bookmark this excerpt only list, Jim updates frequently.

Updated FR Excerpt and Link Only or Deny Posting List due to Copyright Complaints

FYI: The New York Times is not on the excerpt list.

---

If you want to view all forums, use the Forums (Browse All) located at the top right side of the latest posts page.

[TomServo]

Damned straight...bump...

[farmfriend]

Part of the problem as I see it, and no I don't have the answer either, is that there is way too much cross over between the forums. There is a religious catagory under news and a religious forum. You have a catagory for politics but a political forum. You have a editorial catagory and a blog forum. Hmmm where to post things. The confusion and differing opinions are going to keep the mods busy. Things need to be simplified. Easier on the posters and easier on the mods.

Just my two cents.

[farmfriend]

It might be helpful to put those brief definitions next to the catagories as well so that when you are posting you can see them.

[Constitution Day]

Well said.

Particularly troublesome are certain Freepers who post one-paragraph (or less) vanities but insist on using three stars on each end of the title.

[Rightly Biased]

In the dictionary for redundant it says "see redundant"

[farmfriend]

Well I don't see a religion category but I think you know what I meant. These two are good examples:

Philosophy - Discussions of philosophy and ideology.
Political Humor/Cartoons - Funny stuff

These seem like they are things that should not be listed under news. Anyway, I've said my piece. I'll go hide in my corner now.

[TomServo]

Dunno FF. All it takes is a little common sense to figure out where, what and why to place a post. With the "look-at-me-itis" running rampant here, folks are tryin' to turn this place into an IRC site.

I guess my take on this is that all the rules, hints, help and "pointers" go down the crapper when folks are in a rush to be first.

No matter what they post.

[John Lenin]

I clicked on 3 articles and all of them were vanities. What is this crap ?

[farmfriend]

Yes there have been a lot of "let me ask my question in a separate thread on breaking news" posts lately.

My suggestions strike at a deeper problem than that. I had several friends who were prolific thread posters, all worthy posts, but there was confusion about where stuff should be posted even given the guide lines. I just think some simplification could help alleviate future problems.

[TomServo]

What is this crap ?

Crap...;-)

[Publius]

I agree. He is just one of a lot of people who like to see their names in print. If they're willing to write a well-reasoned essay, I won't complain, but it's all going too far.

[farmfriend]

If you wrote in double-sized red italics, everybody wrote in double-sized red italics

And usually they had it in Marque so it scrolled across the page. Very hard to read.

[TomServo]

I understand what you're saying. And the worthy posts seem to be few and far between.

[farmfriend]

And the worthy posts seem to be few and far between.

Well I meant they were genuine news articles. I think there was some controversy over there true worth as well.

[drq]

btt

[TomServo]

Gotcha.

[TheLion]

Bump

[Publius]

It seems like yesterday and today have been the worst. And it won't improve until after the election -- unless someone cracks down on the vanities as a waste of bandwidth.

Back 4 years ago we had a Vanities/My Opinion category that contained most the one-line useless threads. Maybe it's time to bring it back.

[TomServo]

Not to mention the 'Caption this *'.....

[Graybeard58]

Bttt