Posted on 10/21/2001 2:30:37 PM PDT by E.G.C.
Earlier today, I was going through the articles section to see what articles had been posted. I found an article from Newsmax, a great internet news source which was posted earlier this morning. I scrolled down and found the same article was posted last night. I pointed out on the second posting thread that the article had alreay been posted and provided the link to the first posting.
At the time I did this the first posting of the article had soliticed a mere 44 comments. Needless to say one of the posters to the second thread took exception to my mentioning and got a little bit crabby with me about it.
There's a good reason why JimRob and many other freepers do not like to see duplicate articles posted. The reason is because it takes up lots of valuable bandwidth. Bandwidth that could be used for other articles just as vitally important as the ones being posted.
There are millions of internet articles from great sources such as Newsmax and World Net Daily that are waiting to be posted here so people can have a chance to comment on these articles. The only articles which cannot be posted here are from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times for legal reasons. But, articles from other sources are there waiting to be posted here on Free Republic.
The Search Engine is our dear friend. It gives us a chance to type in an article we want to post to see if it has already been posted. If it hasn't, then it's perfectly fine to post that article so people like myself can comment on it. That's what Free Republic is all about.
Now, you can gripe and flame all you want to. But, the fact of the matter is that this is Jim's website. We are all guests here. Posting here is a privilege, not a right. If you make a mistake somewhere, even if it's inadvertant, you best be ready because it's gonna be pointed out like it or not if not by Jim or the admin. moderator, certainly by a freeper who's watching for these mistakes.
They do not work well enough to help posters learn of previous posts.
Title, Topic, Author, and Source searches are unreliable.
To searches are fairly reliable, while By searches are not.
If a Freeper wishes to post an article, there should be fields of an initial page design, wherein the Title, Source, and Author may be entered, then searched upon, with results listed starting with exact matches running on down to "sounds like" and / or [is] "spelled like."
Again, there needs to be a "Posters' Search for Previous Posts Page" at FreeRepublic.com.
Since most people don't do searches for a specific article, it's not bad to have a something posted again. Besides, if the conversation has taken a bad turn, like when two people start flaming each other about a stupid point that doesn't mean a hill of beans, it's kind of nice to not have to keep tripping over them.
DOUBLE POSTS ARE NOT THE END OF THE WORLD
Al-Qaeda terrorist duped FBI, Army
I just did a search, to test whether or not the FR search feature would find that post. Here is the criteria:
title: "terrorist"
Results:
No posts found in 7.881 seconds.
Again, the FR search engine does not work reliably.
The page --- http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/post?t=22 --- has no clear link button to another page which should have search tips. The word "search" is not even on the page.
Searching for previous posts is NOT reliable.
I agree, that the search function is not all it should be, but I find that using a key word from the title will usually bring good results.
Of course, this assumes that people use the original article title, which is a whole other problem.
"That reminds me of a story..."
I worked on ROBOTS.
The company hired a new guy electrical engineer who promptly changed the wiring on the ROBOTS, while I was on a service call across the nation.
I get back home and enter all the command lines in the last unit off the line ... and of course, the vice-pres. makes the scene ... and said ROBOT tries to kill itself!
Of course, the un-informed are looking at me, while I am observing how "shrewd" is the new guy at suddenly carving out new turf.
It was very clever. Job security. He rewired everything in the inventory, to make himself immediately indispensible.
Shame on him.
Now shame on me.
Goodbye.
1. They hog up FreeRepublic disk space. Each duplicate posting doubles, triples, quadruples... the amount of space needed to present a topic.
2. They interfere with the development of discussion on a topic.
a. When a topic is first posted, people link other resources. Comments are made. The issue is fully developed.
b. Second post comes along, fewer people participate. Fewer informative links. The discussion lags.
c. People coming across the second, third, fourth... thread don't know there are additional resources. They don't get the full scoop.
d. People visit the thread on a certain topic. They think they've seen "the thread" on the topic. The people who post duplicate threads are the ones
who are the least informed. Fourth and fifth postings are generally pathetic threads.
What can you do to prevent this:
1. Always use the exact title as it appeared in the source. Inside you can add your comments.
2. Pick out key words and do a search for them.
Ex: India says Pakistan is Blowing it in Kashmir Search for India or Pakistan or Kashmir
a. If you do not find an article with the same title, check out those with titles close to yours. If you don't find a duplicate, post yours.
b. If you do find an article with the same title, check the source. If it's the same don't past yours.
If the source is different, check the first two sentences. If they are the same don't post yours.
Folks, please help by not double posting.
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