[SkyPilot]

I asked someone last week to "please stop excerpting articles when it was not necessary."

I got jumped on by 3 or 4 posters.

Even when I posted verbatim the home page exclusion to only exerpting articles from WTP and LA Times--there was not a lot of love in the room.

There are numerous reasons why the excerpting of articles stinks!

- pop up ads (of everything from "Yeast Infections" to "Bling Bling Jewelry!"
- embedded links
- links that don't work or are removed
- lag time and modem crawl

Did I miss any?

[hellinahandcart]

Yeah, you missed two:

-Deleterious effect on FR archives (we'll have a bazillion preserved discussion threads with no CONTEXT, since the linked site will have long ago stopped hosting the original article).

-The end of FR's role as media watchdog. Example: last week's smear of Paul Wolfowitz by the Guardian. We had two very lively threads going about that, and Praise God, someone posted the full text of the Guardian article here. Because the Guardian ended up yanking the story that very afternoon! Since it had only ever appeared in the online edition, we'd have had NO PROOF of what the Guardian had (deliberately) done, and the discussion would have been drastically cut short.

Do these excerpters ever stop and think?

Makes me want to bite their heads off, as if they wuz chocolate bunnies...:D

[hellinahandcart]

Forgot one more--SPAM. Some papers force you to register before you can read their $#!t online, and then they've got your email address. I won't play.