by JackRiddler » Tue Jul 29, 2014 11:37 pm
One of the greatest things here is the monster threads that run for literally years - some of them for five, six, seven years. I'm talking about the Egyptian revolution thread, "Top Secret America," JFK disinfo 2013, the current Malaysia plane crashes thread, etc. It doesn't matter who started'em. They can turn into awesome archives, resources that cover all aspects of an issue, invaluable chronicles of developing stories. They become histories, they give us a collective memory that we can browse through for much greater understanding than if we just have isolated articles with a few comments that then drop off the board.
This is why you won't find me complaining about "TIDS," because AD is keeping that as a single archive. He's trying to do something in depth, that's what RI should be about. If you don't like the results in that case, you can ignore the thread. (Again, for those who want it in a sub-forum: there's only one forum, it's called "Latest threads" and it shows the newest bumped threads of ALL forums.)
Same deal with the complaints about long excerpts or whole articles. These are so useful! They help you read a whole bunch of related articles on a single thread, in context, without interruption. Like a book. It's important to link back to originals and thus encourage people to check those sites out. Is scrolling really such a chore?! Also, archiving full articles counteracts the Memory Hole. You can find articles here that have been deleted from the original sites, or that have been CHANGED. This is a service, I do believe. In addition, RI people often take the opportunity to annotate with their own comments and analysis.
The opposite extreme is in pointless thread proliferation. Again, doesn't matter who starts'em, lots of people do, I do sometimes too. Sometimes the same issue will be covered in multiple stories on consecutive days, when these could be added to monster threads. Sometimes people who started a new thread about something yesterday will today start another one on the same subject (sometimes another two or three). I don't understand why some of the more prolific posters don't contribute toward consolidating the great monster threads, including in many cases THEIR OWN. That's too bad. I think too many new threads on current news are distracting. They detract from the possibility of adding stories to the monster threads and keeping those discussions more contextual and analytic. If we want daily news blasts, we can get those from Google News, or Facebook, or HuffPo, or whatever.
I hope RI can be something more, a place where we can maintain depth and analysis.
We meet at the borders of our being, we dream something of each others reality. - Harvey of R.I.
To Justice my maker from on high did incline:
I am by virtue of its might divine,
The highest Wisdom and the first Love.
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