Posted on 10/21/2002 11:16:00 AM PDT by Destro
10/21/02
Freeper Consideration: We need another field for our news title comments!
This is directed to our webmaster(s). I have noticed that more and more articles have had their titles altered by the members lately (in this practice I am also guilty). The reason I think is simple, on many hot button issues the left wing media does not provide a descriptive enough news title and I think it is done so that the item can have as less visibility as possible when it comes to conservative view points, etc. Also, Freepers may have a hot item that is of interest to many others and the title does not indicate it's importance.
I know we are not supposed to alter the title in anyway to prevent multiple postings, but I do have a suggestion.
Could not a small section directly under the news article title provide a brief one sentence description of the juicy parts of the post to help Freepers and lurkers scan forums/sections quicker?
It should be easy to input and it would not be covered by the search engine.
Have an independent page with three columns listing the title, the source, and the author.
Then we could quicklly scan down the list to see if what we want to post has recently been listed. Even if the original poster changes the title, we still might spot the connection.
I must have done a poor job in describing my idea.
Could not a small section directly under the news article title provide a brief one sentence description of the juicy parts of the post to help Freepers and lurkers scan forums/sections quicker? It should be easy to input and it would not be covered by the search engine.
Then let the reader of the article make up his/her own mind about the contents.
The problem with this is that the titles are designed to grab your attention, but what if they fail in that task?
For instance this current title: Washington sniper could be linked to French deserter would be expanded so that the poster can add Sniper of Yusolav origin.
This way those not interested in the sniper story but interested in the Balkans would not miss the story.
I agree. The first story I posted here had to do with a Buffalo Bills football player who had a heart transplant in New York City on September 11 2001. The ambulance carrying his new heart was the last vehicle allowed over the bridge before they closed all the bridges into NYC. It was a good story but it got ignored because the title was "September 11 brings mixed emotions to former Bill (Doug Goodwin)"
The story also talked about how his family is having trouble paying for the financial costs of his treatment.
I like to include the second level titles that many papers include.
I understand that the exact title needs to be used for searching and to prevent dupes, but I don't see how appending a descriptive note in parentheses or brackets, as is the usual freeper practice, interferes with this. In fact it seems to me that appending the name of a popular conservative author or analyst, a country name not used in the title, a relevent subject tag, etc, would assist in searching (especially as there is currently no by author search, and keyword searches only retreive recent articles).
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