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.

[Sidebar Moderator]

but what's to prevent multiple moderators working independently to lock all the threads, pointing users to threads locked by other moderators?

Nothing.

[michigander]

no less than 10 threads appeared to that effect.

10? Is that all?

JohnHuang2 must be sleeping.

[IVote2]

"Or we can stay and bitch. People always forget that third option."

I think that option is only open if you have contributed to keep Free Republic going.. heh heh heh

[VRWC_minion]

FWIW, you might want to enter "all" on the last post to the thread that you lock. That will give everyone who posted and does self searches a heads up.

[TomServo]

As a dedicated MST3K fan..

Good for you! I have 154 episodes on tape if you ever want to copy 'em. ;-)

[TheRealLobo]

Phew, the ducking helped I guess.

[Sidebar Moderator]

Thanks, will try to remember that.

[ThePythonicCow]

what's to prevent multiple moderators working independently to lock all the threads

As someone else said, nothing. But such a deadlock seems to be quite preferable to Mutually Assured Deletion, since the deadlock leaves quite visible evidence of who is doing what, suggests a half clue as to why, and lets the odd reply remain on the record.

I suggest it is time you quit demonstrating your ability to find flaws in any solution, and say a couple "Hail Moderators - good job well done."

[captain11]

Smart, common sense reply. Jim may want to consider a search on the first sentence or two of the article body, as an alternate to the title search. I've noticed enough minor variability in titles across different news sources--even for AP articles--to warrant it. This problem will improve in time as sites increasingly adopt news syndication standards.

[Elsie]

Just tossing out an idea, FWIW..is there any way that when you hit the PREVIEW button when posting a new thread....the title automatically goes to the Search function, and in addition to the preview of your new thread, it displays any threads that meet the Search parameters within, says, a two hour time limit...

---

What!? You want computers to do automatically what we humans could do manually?

I'm filing a protest with the ACLU.........

Automatic Computing Luddite Union

[surfer]

To bad you can't merge posts...that would solve the problem! Come on Jim you don't need any sleep lets get the code cracking!

[surfer]

Whenever I see a duplicate post I just stare at the sun for hours looking for a host!

[Elsie]

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

That would solve both problems:
Multiple threads on same subject, and,
MY valuable reply not vanishing into thin air as a thread gets pulled. ;^)

[surfer]

Well Elsie I already suggested that, so I guess this post isn't as valuable...lol...just kidding...nice see someone else here that is left handed!

[Sidebar Moderator]

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

Piece of cake, right John?

[eccl1212]

not everybody has a dsl or fast connection. some of us on modems cannot even ping faster than 11 kpbs.. that is why posts over a five minute time period can lag... folks SEARCH for an article... find nothing. Then they write what appears to be missing... and get clobbered for writing duplicates.. often with different titles, that are then floating in the sidebars.

I never post anything breaking, at least hardly ever... so it is not a problem... but some folks do and they post from different articles that have different titles and sources. I am sure it is difficult to catch them all.

I think it is important for "moderators" to realise that it is not being done "on purpose" to mess up the "sidebar" and also that folks DO check before they post... lag time IS a problem... and this is often WHY it is occuring.

When someone says something like "this is the eighth one of these I have pulled this afternoon", they sound like they are angry with us for NOT seeing the eight others that were similar (in their view) but are missing completely from ours... which has a different title from the ONE that was kept.

For what its worth... probably not much.

[captain11]

the title automatically goes to the Search function, and in addition to the preview of your new thread...

I like it, a lot :). Combined with the extended search on the first part of the article bodies I suggest in #89, it would go a long way to solving the problems. Another feature that could help the moderators would be "thread-merge", wherein multiple threads that are later determined to be duplicate can simply be combined, using the best-formatted article variant as the initial post, and the thread consisting of the union of all posts from duplicate threads.

[captain11]

No, your opinion is right on. Valid comments.

[eccl1212]

actually the "anarchy" you refer to worked pretty well for the last three or four years... FWIW

[Sidebar Moderator]

I'll keep that in mind. Having recently been away and only able to connect via a 26k line, I realize how frustrating it is.