About the recent deletions of Daschle's anthrax posts

FreeRepublic ^ | 10/15/2001 | sidebar moderator

[Somebody4Justice]

I noticed the "replies", (number of replies to a article), figure is no longer on the main articles page.

This makes it very hard to determine which post is the main post and to make the decision to read the post, or not.

[Somebody4Justice]

oops, It was just a string of new articles with no comments in them.

sorry.

[Lazamataz]

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.

I blame you! J'accuse! J'accuse!

[Lazamataz]

Look in the mirror.

Bake a muffin.

Wax your ears.

[runningbear]

Thanks for updating freepers on dupes and deletions... Good job!

[ChemistCat]

Earlier today I realized I had posted a somewhat irresponsible and definitely unnecessary thread. I requested that it be deleted, and it was--swiftly and with no headache. Thanks. I really do appreciate how FR is run. There is a courtesy here that is lacking elsewhere.

[Cruise Missile Diplomacy]

I realize I'm coming into this late, but I can't find a direct answer to NittanyLion's post #14:

Is it possible to close duplicate threads to new posts, with the final reply linking posters to the active thread? That might eliminate the confusion generated when posters are unable to locate the undeleted thread. Perhaps the duplicates could be deleted at a later time.

I appreciate all the thought and effort that goes into this forum but I believe our moderator's valuable time is being wasted by this pursuit. Although I agree that the prevention (pre-submittal searches) are the best solution, I find this "cure" (article pruning) is worse than the disease (duplicate articles). This relentless slashing is making the site less usable.

[Palladin]

This thread is soooo interesting. Can we have at least one hundred threads a day telling us why other threads were deleted? The ensuing discussion is profoundly enlightening and intellectually stimulating.

May I start another thread on this topic?

[Cruise Missile Diplomacy]

Well, I visited this thread because it was on the "Breaking News" list and I had a question related to the subject. Your sarcasm toward a sincere question indicates that you are here because you don't have anything better to do. The only response I can muster to your self inflicted boredom is pity.

[GOPJ]

Appreciate your work to focus threads, as much of the fun is reading responses.

[John Robinson]

Merging is an interesting idea.

[1rudeboy]

No it did not. Unless you dozed through Impeachment, Election 2000, and what's going on now.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

John is just putting this into the system.

We had an Ad Hoc way of indexing but threads were only retrievable for about 7 days .

With the new system it will be much longer!

But it is a work in progress!

More detail on the Changes to the whole system here:

Freerepublic features (the run-down)

And there are other threads discussing various aspects!

[this_ol_patriot]

Thank you,
It will be a very good feature, many times I wanted to show a family member or friend an article or those fantastic parodies and cartoons our guys do and spent more searching than appreciating. I don't always remember to bookmark or bump a thread to get a link to it.
Very Good.

[steveegg]

Elsie:

But.... can't the moderators just MERGE threads?

Sidebar Moderator:

Piece of cake, right John?

John Robinson:

Merging is an interesting idea.

'Tis quite interesting, but how to do an actual merge without REALLY upsetting the applecart. I (and a lot of others) have occassionally linked to specific replies in a thread, and simply squashing everything into one thread would blow those links right out of the water. The current solution of simply locking duplicate threads is about as close as we're going to get to an "ideal" solution.

There IS one trick that may work better; when a thread is locked for merging purposes, if the "post reply" function would go to the "merge" thread (preferably while the "reply to:" link still goes back to the closed thread).