Are you ready maggot?
Posted on 04/07/2006 2:12:34 PM PDT by Admin Moderator
Hi everyone, it's been awhile since we had a refresher course on the posting guidelines. We've had a lot of newbies sign up. Welcome Aboard! The more the merrier! And it doesn't hurt you longtimes to re-read this. As always, we're here to help. Ask questions, we'll do our best to answer.
If it's a breaking news topic, check breaking news first, it's probably already posted. Check the breaking news sidebar first. Don't try to be the first one with the story, you've already been beaten by about eight threads.
To avoid duplicate posts, please search before posting. Use the published article title to prevent duplicates. The best method to search is to pick a key word or two from the title. If the article you are posting is, "Cindy Sheehan is a witch in a ditch", start with 'Cindy' for the key word. If it is a hot topic, you might want to use two or more keywords, in this case, try 'Cindy Sheehan'. For an effective search, select 'match all words' and select 'order by post time'.
If your thread title has a unique word, like 'moonbat' try using that word first in your search. Again, use the "order by post time" option to see the latest threads posted.
It also helps to scan the keywords at the top right hand side. Check "Popular Keywords". If you're posting an immigration thread, nine times out of ten, it's been posted, or your one line vanity, can be included with the hundreds of already posted threads.
Please confine your vanitities to actual thoughts, not, "OMG, did you jsu8t see waht XXXX just sade?!!!!!!!"
Vanities and General Interest.
All non-sourced non-news threads are posted here. All fluff stories are posted here. We are a political forum, not a pit bull, SUV or porno site. Keep your threads to a political nature. There are of course exceptions, but post those to the General/Chat forum.This doesn’t mean your one thought is a thread by itself, and your vanities should be substantial to be considered a news forum thread. Others will be moved to the various forums. 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/Chat. Vanities should be limited to the mission of Free Republic.
Free Republic is the premier online gathering place for independent, grass-roots conservatism on the web. We're working to roll back decades of governmental largesse, to root out political fraud and corruption, and to champion causes which further conservatism in America. And we always have fun doing it. Hoo-yah!
Free Republic is huge, we're pushing 250,000 registered posters, so don't clutter up our news forum with your one thought lines, local interest aligator stories, or whatever floats your boat. Jim and John have worked hard to keep us current, let's utilize the tools they've built. There are areas to have fun discussions as well, but let's keep the news forum dedicated to news. And at times we'll let something fun in news, move something you think is important to chat, and variations of. We're trying to run a forum, not dis you as a poster. Nothing personal, it's just business, and we have to cater to a multitude of personalities. If you disagree, the fastest way to contact us is hit the abuse link, state your name and other usefull stuff, like a link. We're human, we make mistakes. And we can't always read inflection into posts.
For all of you who have blogs or personal web sites that you would like to discuss or promote on Free Republic, here's the place to do it.
Our Bloggers & Personal forum is for:
- Posting from your blog.
- Posting from other peoples blogs.
- Posting 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.
We know many of you think your blog is special. There are some blogs out there worthy of news, like Little Green Footballs. If your blog scoops something, and we blog it, again, let us know. We see most all articles posted, we can analyze your content and compare it to similar threads. We aren't personally trying to 'trash' you. We're trying to keep FR optimized. You have a problem, just ask, we'll work with you. Again, the fastest way, use the abuse function, leave your name and we'll try to get back to you as fast as we can. You can always FR mail us, but that might take longer. Remember, there are 12 of us and 30,000+ posts daily. We don't see it all.
Other sidebars
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.And lastly, please bookmark this excerpt only list, Jim updates frequently.
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.
Updated FR Excerpt and Link Only or Deny Posting List due to Copyright Complaints
Don't think you are being sly or tricky, the mods have seen every trick in the book, so don't try to get around the posting rules with creative antics, your thread will be deleted. We have these rules for a reason. We want Free Republic to be on the internet, not shut down by liberals trying to silence our voices. Please, if you post an article and get an excerpt rule, follow it. Don't try to sneak in a full article in a post, we'll delete it.
We will pull unlinked threads that might violate the excerpt rules.
Other links:
Statement by the founder of Free Republic
Jim and the Mod threads (cool band name)
HTML Sandbox (practice html here, learn new tricks)
Here's the skinny. Go ahead and post it. Blogs are a dime a dozen. We all know that. If it's newsworthy, and an obscure blogger posted it, it'll eventually end up in news. We don't limit blogs to blog only. We've put articles in blog only to shortly realize, this is big news. It's not easy, what's legit news, what's just opinion. But, eventually, the cream will rise to the top. If you're adamant about a thread, send us off a note, we'll review it. 9 times out of 10, we'll move it to news. We aren't Nazis, as the trolls would have you think. We see a lot more than the average poster, even the poster who's here 24-7. But, we know when a developing hot story is in the works, and we try to credit the blogger who first posted it. Hope this helps.
We're ALL newbies from time to time. How did you post HTML as text?
That is hilarious! I never knew that, but always wondered. I checked the FReeper dictionary, but never saw it in there. Do I dare ask about "Cheese" or "Moose"? Others I've seen thrown around a bit!
We have "GUIDELINES". About 4 hours. But a lot depends on the topic. Is it hot, is it in breaking news? How many other posts have been posted? Is it so hot, we've been pulling tons of additional threads? If you post the exact same article 7 hours later, but it's number two in the breaking news sidebar, should we pull it? We discuss this behind the scenes. And sorry to say, a lot 'depends' on the situation. Case by case.
If it's just a generic repost, then we follow the four hour guideline. If it's a hot, everyone is following it, it depends. Moderating doesn't have the 'if then else' rules. It's a dynamic situation. Mostly we have a set of rules......Mostly, we can't follow them.
Jim always has the final say.
If an article is excerpt only, personally, go by the 1/3 rule. Even though John's written a 300 word code, I try to abide by the guidelines and be fair (I'll post the first one or two sentences) Personally, I try not to post from those sites, why give them additional hits when they're being bitchy about it? I don't want to see FR shafted by, "you posted 253 words, and it should have been 216 words".
It is good to be King!
; )
Thanks for the explanation.
Like when you moved recently a modest 're-title' post request from me into breaking news, +8000 views later? ;-)
& #60 ;(remove spaces) is less than
& #62 ;(remove spaces) is greater than
Incorporate that into your html, and poof, instant < or >
It might be newsworty, as a 'saga'.
Personally, I try not to post from those sites..
Don't confuse the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.The Trib is one of the best conservative newspapers in the country, while the Post-Gazette is just another liberal rag.
You know better than I, but I'd be surprised if the Trib gets "bitchy" about posting their stuff on FR.
Thanks for the guidance! :-)
Thank You, I've bookmarked that one.
That's my biggest concern with the sale of Knight-Ridder. McClatchy does allow excerpting, but they're not keeping all the papers, including my local paper. Lord help us if Gannett ends up with a fresh bunch of papers.
Thank you. As a newbie, though getting better at posting and some basic HTML, all the information was noted and this page link added to my browser favorites. I'm not sure how to "bookmark" on FR yet.
Because the Iran keyword link disappeared today (later put back by Admin) I learned how to search using the "keyword" drop down search menu option. Finding out everything I need to know does seem to depend on "experience" over time.
Some of us still need all the help we can get. :-))
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.