About the recent deletions of Daschle's anthrax posts

FreeRepublic ^ | 10/15/2001 | sidebar moderator

[Sidebar Moderator]

In the 10 minutes since the President announced that Tom Daschle had received a possible anthrax letter, no less than 10 threads appeared to that effect.

The moderators moved quickly to pull the duplicates and that spawned 4 threads asking what happened to the threads.

Multiple threads on a topic not only waste bandwidth, but spread the discussion over too many threads to follow.

Please, before posting about an event like this (or for any story) do a search. Check the sidebars, or if you have sidebars turned off, refresh the latest articles or latest posts page to see if your topic is already posted.

[Elsie]

using the best-formatted article variant as the initial post,

Them guys would THEN want a pay raise, 'cause they'd be goin' from a 'moderator' to an 'Editor'

(Big status jump, too..............;^)

[Billie]

Thanks for posting that, Senator. I thought the title of a thread has always been searchable. Maybe I just never searched when it wasn't! :^)

[Sidebar Moderator]

'cause they'd be goin' from a 'moderator' to an 'Editor'

We perform the editor function too. When cleaning up the sidebars we move stuff from one to another much as an editor would. Surprisingly, most posters are pretty good about putting their posts in the right category. Breaking News is the one they get wrong most.

[DouglasKC]

If nobody has suggested it yet, how about an automatic search function that scans for similarily worded titles? Hit the post button, search, bring up links to similarly titled threads and ask if they still want to post it or not.

[Illbay]

I'm glad YOU said it! If I had said it I'd have gotten tons of hate mail saying "I didn't see the first ones! I'm glad they're posting as many as it takes so that I see it! You "thread police" really chap my hide! MYOB!"

When you try to explain--politely--that we're simply pointing out the rules, not making up rules, we are ignored.

[Illbay]

H*ll, I'll bet you anything we'll have more people posting them tonight, as they hear it on their car radios coming home and decide they'll be the "first to break this big news."

[jammer]

I like your work. I wish you could do more--that is, save me from myself sometimes by deleting my duplicate!

[Illbay]

It is precisely the opposite. 95% of all posts are "dreck," to paraphrase SF writer Norman Spinrad.

Moderators are specialized and hand-picked.

This ain't pro sports, where everyone comes to see the "pros" and the refs oughta stay out of the way.

I wish there was more moderation, ESPECIALLY of inane "vanities" that sound like the maunderings of paranoid-schizophrenics who need an adjustment of their medication.

[Ratatoskr]

Moderators are specialized and hand-picked.

Wow. I'd hate to see the ones who didn't make the cut.

[Naspino]

There is a simple solution to the problem. When the post is sent to the server it should compare the subject line with the subject lines of messages posted in the last 30 minutes. If there is a 50% match or higher then it should show the user before committing to the database.

[poweqi]

So, where's the thread ABOUT Daschle?

[captain11]

95% of all posts are "dreck,"

QED

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

This is a Tough problem ---- Got a cartoon on the subject!

.

To find all articles tagged or indexed using

Anthrax_Scare_List

Go here:

OFFICIAL BUMP(TOPIC) LIST

and then click the Anthrax_Scare_List topic to initiate the search! !

[Sidebar Moderator]

Daschle's Office Got Suspicious Letter (Confirm?)

Bush announces Daschle received Anthrax letter

Right in the Breaking news sidebar

[Sandy]

Good. It's about time we had a crackdown on duplicate posts. Keep pulling. :-)

[ken5050]

IMHO, it would still work..the idea is to discourage someone from starting a duplicate thread, or in the case of breaking news, just listing the event....i.e. "Bush News Conference starting now"...so if the search match up some/most of the words used, it would still discourage someone from doing it again

[this_ol_patriot]

OFFICIAL BUMP(TOPIC) LIST

Where have they been hiding this, this should be at the front of the articles somewhere, is there anyway to make something like this sticky and have it stay at the top?

[zip]

Thanks for explaining the situation. I really appreciate all the hard work you put into maintaining a proper forum. Thx

[WIMom]

Look in the mirror.

[Ratatoskr]

Look in the mirror.

Bake a muffin.

No, but yours didn't make much sense, either.