[hellinahandcart]

The link to The Guardian story no longer works...And I can't find it at their website.

The link to The Guardian story no longer works...And I can't find it at their website.

This is yet another STUNNING example of why people need to stop posting friggin' EXCERPTS of everything. We only *have* to excerpt articles from LA Times/Washington Post organizations. Yet the new trend appears to be "post one paragraph and link the rest", even when we don't have to, even though it subjects people to extra time and a flood of pop-up windows, even though the linked websites can and do alter and pull stories at will (which leaves us with ten tons of useless articles in the archives).

This has happened more times than I can count. Websites change stuff ALL THE TIME and if posters only link to the articles, there's no record of the change or the original story. Why, they can pull an article and pretend it never existed at all.

This excerpting trend is due to one of two things, IMO-- ignorance of why we're forced to excerpt from certain sources, or sheer laziness (they don't want to format the whole thing). People should post the full text whenever it's possible, or not bother to post.

[Stultis]

areafiftyone did post the full article in the original thread that I linked at the top of this one. I was only excerpting from his message:

Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil (RUH ROH!!)

[Rodney King]

Amen. I just can't figure out why there is this new excerpting trend.

[EggsAckley]

Right on, helli! I missed this one. My thought is that there is an element of laziness, plus the fact that there are a lot of refugees from Lucianne.com, where they MUST excerpt EVERYTHING. The practice of excerpting generally turns the story into nothing but a fluffy headline, and VERY often the link is obsolete. I still say that JimRob should post the list of taboo sites right at the top of the page, so it's easy to find the list. I know that you and others have posted it, but that still makes me go searching for it when I need it. Keep up the good fight!

S.U.E.