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.
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.
I keep seeing the term "bandwidth" being used with regard to the number of posts, but this is probably a mistake. "bandwidth" pertains to transmission capacity, not storage. The number of posts has nothing to do with bandwidth. It certainly could use up disk space, but not bandwidth. (Please don't tell me it takes bandwidth to download the post. Its miniscule.)
Now, here's a reason I like duplicate posts. Some of us have lives and work to do, and are unable to look at what's been posted lately every ten minutes. Sometimes a day or more will pass before we have a chance to check out the latest. By that time, some really good posts are so far down the list, we just never get to to see them. We really appreciate it when someone is thoughtful enough to repost an article that is really good so the chances of us missing it are reduced.
You are right about who has the final say, and he ought to. If he is interested in having more come to his site, he will consider what will be useful to the busy productive individuals who cannot spend all day loitering here.
BTW, if storage is the problem, there are some neat auto-compress/decompress utilities that allow stored info to be accessed just as if it weren't compressed and they save gops of disk space.
Hank
Also, I don't usually look at threads with more than 50-100 comments. I'm sure many of them are worth reading, but I just don't have the time to read them all. Keeping track of which comments I might want to respond to - and seeing if anyone else already said what I would have said - is a major pain when the threads are too long, so I just skip them altogether. Having just one thread for every article would not help me at all.
I can't control how accurate the parameters of the search are. Gee did you stop to think that the same sory in different sources have different titles?
If breaking news occurs and 20 other people are posting at the same time from 10 different sources...OH WHAAAAAA!!!!
Bandwidth? If Jim Rob needs to delete for space...fine...it's part of the hell of having a successful website..my heart is bleeding.
Do you realize how many good potential posts we don't get from people who are scared to post b/c cranky uptight freepers continually bitch about this?
I know freepers want to see 1000's of replies come from their posts, and it pisses them off, when somebody else "steals" the spotlight...get over it.....it's just a post.
I'm sorry if I seemed crabby. And of course I know that FR is actually private property (to which I do contribute).
But it's also like a newspaper, for those just breezing by, perhaps as they really don't have the time to do a search. I wouldn't necessarily have even thought about that particular topic had I not just come upon it. Plus, it's nice occasionally too, to get a little more out-front and more likely read with an early response, say from #2 to 20 or so, rather than the greater chance of not being read among a plethora of responses to an earlier post.
Sidebar Moderator routinely locks threads because they've been posted earlier. Okay, but I likely wouldn't have seen it at all if not when I came upon it. And where I might've been #8 in reply, I'm rather redirected to an earlier thread where I may now become #93.
I don't think it's an ego thing. It's just nice to know you're being heard up-front where unless one is really interested in the topic, or it's breaking or something, most readers are just not going to read all the responses to a given thread.
And what was ever wrong with fresh points of view anyway?
Plus, there's a lot of bandwidth use around here that has much less to do with duplicate threads.
MiaT?
And the majority of my replies are one line, or less.
I hope I don't seem unreasonable.
And I sure would've pinged a fellow Freeper, E.G.C., if I'd had encounter with one who's issue I'd taken onto another thread.
Thank you.
I'm not sure where you're going with this, but I have NEVER had the server reject an article because it was "full."
I think the thread-locking business is the best solution, bar none.
As to freeper Onedoug, Yeah I do agree FR is like a newspaper. You come to it to get the latest stories and updates. I do agree that sometimes these searches take so long to spew out the articles and so foruth. I do agree that's it's not an ego thing and there's nothing wrong with fresh points of view. I guess what I and other freepers are trying to do here is do things here to keep this place flowing smoothly. Running a website does cost money, especially when you're providing a place which allows people to exercise their first amendment rights of freedoms of speech. In any event your point is well taken, onedoug.
Again, thanks to everyone who participated in this thread. It has received more responses than the other two which I've posted here in "Your Opinions/Question." I'll have another observation for everyone to consider soon.
Regards.