About the recent deletions of Daschle's anthrax posts

FreeRepublic ^ | 10/15/2001 | sidebar moderator

[Sidebar Moderator]

In the 10 minutes since the President announced that Tom Daschle had received a possible anthrax letter, no less than 10 threads appeared to that effect.

The moderators moved quickly to pull the duplicates and that spawned 4 threads asking what happened to the threads.

Multiple threads on a topic not only waste bandwidth, but spread the discussion over too many threads to follow.

Please, before posting about an event like this (or for any story) do a search. Check the sidebars, or if you have sidebars turned off, refresh the latest articles or latest posts page to see if your topic is already posted.

[Sidebar Moderator]

Because the duplicate threads were coming so fast and there are multiple moderators working, ALL of the posts were deleted at one point and the oldest has been restored.

We also decided to leave a second post, containing a pulished story on the subject in breaking news. Normally it would be better to have the full story added to the original thread, but in this case the original thread had many replies and the full story deserved to be available.

[dep]

i think that if you look you'll note that the threads were being simultaneously composed, which means that a search wouldn't have accomplished anything.

dep

[Ingtar]

I appreciate the efforts you take to focus threads

[Sidebar Moderator]

To some degree, yes, it is unavoidable. However, some were posted a full 5 minutes afterwards.

[Sidebar Moderator]

i think that if you look you'll note that the threads were being simultaneously composed, which means that a search wouldn't have accomplished anything.

You are correct for some of them, but for some of the later ones, it would have.

[Dog Gone]

I agree with your actions, and wish that everyone here would check ON EVERY STORY they post whether it has been previously posted.

It's no fun to finish composing a brilliant reply only to discover that the thread has been deleted, or that there are five other threads running at the same time on the same story.

[KeepTheEdge]

Thank you for responding, and for the hardwork, in a flurry of postings.

[rainingred]

Thanks for the explanation. You folks do fine work.

[Nora]

There may well have been a time lag - but I suspect it is equally likely to have been caused by the different internet routes to the site. A great deal of the 'net has been disrupted lately.

Whether it was a failure to search or a slow refresh, I have been around here long enough to see that FReepers are pretty grown up about rearranging themselves to one main thread. Absent an imminent threat to crash the server, I think a little less "quick on the draw" deletion would serve the forum well.

[ScholarWarrior]

Thanks. We are all impatient and a little apprehensive.
This is one of the few places we trust.

[aristeides]

When will we be able to do title searches again? That's by far the easiest way to see if a story has already been posted.

[Henry F. Bowman]

Even though the threads were posted essentially at the same time, there is no excuse for failing to to another search just before hitting the "post" button. (Open a new window to check this.)

It is "vanity" to try to be the first, at the expense of the system's resources and your fellow members' time. There is nothing wrong with waiting 5 minutes to see if it was posted. There are no "winners" in the race to post first. Only losers.

[Ratatoskr]

Because the duplicate threads were coming so fast and there are multiple moderators working, ALL of the posts were deleted

Does this not strike you as a serious design flaw?

[NittanyLion]

Is it possible to close duplicate threads to new posts, with the final reply linking posters to the active thread? That might eliminate the confusion generated when posters are unable to locate the undeleted thread. Perhaps the duplicates could be deleted at a later time.

I'm just throwing the suggestion out there for argument's sake. I think the moderators do a great job given the volume of posts on this forum.

[TomB]

Absent an imminent threat to crash the server, I think a little less "quick on the draw" deletion would serve the forum well.

So you would rather have 5 threads get multiple replys on them and then get deleted? The whole idea to pulling threads is to keep the discussion centered. I'd hate to spend time composing a reply to a thread that gets deleted on down the line.

Let them do their job.

[1rudeboy]

Humans are a design flaw, whether they be moderators, or members in a headlong rush to be the "first" to post what they hear on the radio.

[Sidebar Moderator]

That does happen when a 'hot' story breaks as in the Daschle threads. We do our best to try to keep the first one posted, the one with the most activity or a sited source as the main thread. In this case, they all came pretty close together. It happens, and we try our best to deal with it. When we make mistakes, we just blame Jim! LOL!

[Senator Pardek]

It still works. Daschle

[Sidebar Moderator]

Does this not strike you as a serious design flaw?

We're human and we make mistakes. We don't try to hide them and we correct them when we become aware of them.

I don't think I could get far enough away from John Robinson to avoid the fallout if I asked him to write code that would prevent what happened here, briefly, this time. :o)