Many news articles repeat the same leader statements over and over, not to mention including extraneous advertising that has nothing whatsoever to do with the article itself, and is often confusing. Wading through all the repeats and unrelated text makes reading them difficult. If you believe the article is important enough for you to post and for the rest of us to read, why not make it a little easier? There are some people whose posts I don’t even try to read because they are too lazy to do that for us.

All that’s necessary is to post your text into a Word document, read through it, edit out the repeats and stuff that doesn’t relate, then copy and paste what’s left in the forum post. (You can also do that in the forum text block, but I find it easier in a document.)

This issue has been mentioned here before, but it’s evidently time to bring it up again.

Amen.

To add an aside, if you feel the article is important enough to post to the site, don't just link the article. Copy a paragraph or two and paste it in quotes or use the quote function so we can read it before clicking the link. Especially now that most news sites require ads or are behind a pay wall, I find that I click a link and am immediately blocked from reading the article.

This is the What’s Your Deal section, so I would like to add:
My time is limited—-yeah even though I’m retired. Please don’t waste it posting a video link without some description of what it is and why it’s worth watching.

Several recent examples of what I’m referring to prompted me to bring this back up.

If you believe the article is important enough for you to post and for the rest of us to read, why not make it a little easier? There are some people whose posts I don’t even try to read because they are too lazy to do that for us.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
This is the What’s Your Deal section, so I would like to add:
My time is limited—-yeah even though I’m retired. Please don’t waste it posting a video link without some description of what it is and why it’s worth watching.

To further that end, if a YouTube video, use Karmanator or the embed code right there on YouTube to embed the video.

THANK YOU, sigfreund!!! I have been (internally) bitching about this for a loooong time. I think I may have even posted something addressing this issue some months ago.

Post the link and the first paragraph or two. If you need a gazillion gigabytes of someone else’s opinion maybe you don’t have that much to offer.

JALLEN was the finest example of how to do it right. I miss having him aggregate the morning news.

In copying articles or material from some websites I've found that some additional words or symbols not visible while reading the website are picked up and included in the body of what is being copied but appear in what is being pasted. In some cases, news websites will include either duplicate header bullet points or will repeat portions of the copied article...making it all the more confusing and difficult to read.

When posting from a smart phone I often find myself first posting the entire article, mistakes and duplicates all, then immediately editing what I just posted.

It really is a good practice to proof read what one has just posted.

Pounding the table in agreement, adding my harrumph.




Link to original video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Yt3GBlVjUd0

With all the complaints and helpful tips recently posted, maybe it's time to sticky them or aggregate them all in one Helpful Posting Tips or Posting Etiquette type thread.

I don't think enough people will get this reminder in this section of the forum.

Hopefully some of the posters in the other sections will notice this thread.

Latest example: Giant Spiders Invading The Lounge.

You can also edit it in notepad if you don't have Word or some other word processor.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
Many news articles repeat the same leader statements over and over, not to mention including extraneous advertising that has nothing whatsoever to do with the article itself,

When I see these, I know I am reading mainstream news which is immediately suspect. I don't mind at all when folks do this as it tags the article as a potential pro-adminstration propaganda feed and the information in it is consistely unreliable and often deliberately misleading or outright fabrication.

It is, however, an exact quote, not edited, and there is a major push to only quote exactly what was presented with no revisions as part of copyright law. Some media are now revoking online privileges over it.

So, we're darned if we do and darned if we don't.

Instead of quoting the whole front page link it might work to only extract the exact part desired. See above. We have that problem on forums, copy paste an entire post, the next does the same, and add in irrelevant signature lines it becomes a wall of unconnected text lines with no continuity.

It's why I don't have sig lines and constantly battle to keep posts limited. Unsuccessfully.

I'm rooting for ya, we are all in this together.

Evidently time to bring this back up.
Given some of the recent threads I must really question whether the posters read anything they post themselves.

I don’t understand why lately there seems to be a plethora of news stories copied and pasted. No person comments or opinions, just a copy, paste, post.

Why? It’s not even important topics. It just seems to be random super long posts, with all the crap in there. No editing, nothing.

I work hard to weed out the extraneous stuff when I copy and paste. Did you know that advertising stuff was NOT in the original article? It takes considerable effort to do so and I sometimes wonder whether it is appreciated. I can bet if I post the first paragraph of a WSJ article and give a link there will be complaints as the articles sit behind a paywall. Not as easy as it seems.
BTW I read the entirety of the article I post.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: ZSMICHAEL,

I agree that having context for the article, and a quick summary clipped out would be best.

I don't understand, though, why there are so many news articles posted here. We all read the news we want to read from our own sources. Maybe we read Drudge. Maybe we like MSNBC. We really don't need threads repeating news, just to be sure we see a major international or national story.