The man who wouldn't be President

Well, I often cut and paste songs, poems, and lyrics to music, sooooooo. Let's limit it to certain categories such as philosophy, religion, and politics.

It is something that can be taken up with the moderators as sometimes the C&P is on the edge or sometimes over the edge of violating the TOS -- i.e., hogging a forum by spamming with endless C&P. There are guidelines in the political and other categories in regards to protocol. There have been discussions started about C&P. It may be time for another but it would be a good idea that a moderator is involved.

This is a kind of suggestion box right now so let's see what can be done.

I honestly do not see any moderator getting involved in stopping the C&Ping. It leads to too many interesting discussions. I often find myself agreeing with what an article says. When I do, I often will share with A2K in the form of a C&P. I consider that my commentary. If I have gone to the effort of C&Ping it, it must mean something.

LW,
I'm just talking of taking a week to have nothing but freeform discussion/arguments in this forum... not trying to make it into a law or have the C&P Police patrolling the forum handing out tickets.

I was just suggesting trying something a bit different for a wekk or so.


Letty,
We were only discussing this for the Politics forum to try and encourage a little more original, 'lively' debate... not to turn it into a C&P banned Forum

Ok, federal.

There is no inference here of the owner of the site or the moderators stopping C&P. This goes along with the usual tangents one runs across on these boards. It's a suggestion that if a thread was started again about curtailing long C&P's it may influence the next time the guidelines are rewritten. I believe it's already addressed but perhaps in not enough detail. The guidelines are not part of the TOS even though there have been what could be considered as spamming the site with endless links and C&P. I remember there has been action taken on a few of these. This is a privately owned site and there's been a lot of leeway on how far a poster can go before he or she gets into trouble. I'm going further than I should with this as I am on the staff but not a moderator. If you want to start an informal discussion on modifying the C&P craze, that could be a good thing. I would like to see one or more of the moderators take heed.

BTW, one of the most effective ways to discourage the amateur Drudges is to not reply to that discussion (I know it's hard -- I've fallen into the trap myself).

Actually I'm wondering why BBB and some others weren't criticized for their excessive Cut and Paste adventures.

I tried that once Perception and I was inundated with "if you don't like it, don't read or reply to it."

Doesn't work for you I am afraid... Your articles do not agree with certain sensibilities on A2K and are contrarian to many peoples thought processes.

I don't think this should be about criticism or blame or anything like that...
(There is far too much of that)

This should be about setting a new standard in political debate...
(I think the people on this board are intelligent enough to accept this challenge)

Raising the bar if you will...
(Making the Limbo easier on we old farts )

Just my feelings on this.

I see you've also noticed there are certain "thought processes" that are the sole property of the opposition. Amazing! It's sort of like the victim in a divorce (the man of course) after the wife gets most of what she wants she says: OK----what's mine is mine and now we can fight over what's yours.

How about this: Those who don't want to cut & paste, won't do so. Nor will we reply to new threads that begin with a cut & paste (with no original commentary).

(Gee, I'm kind of liking this thread. We're all getting along so nicely. Kind of like those stories about WWI, when it was Xmas Eve, and the two sides exchanged gifts. Or something like that. Did that really happen?)

Well, for one thing. BBB is a delightful person. It has become a practice of mine to never...and I mean NEVER wound another's soul. She knows how I feel about long threads, cause I told her in a poem.

Yes, this thread is going well, and yet everyone has had a say.

I do hope that we can make a point or two without name calling.

Now, I'm going to do the limbo. Hey! I can still do that even though I may be a farledoat. (figure that one out)

Yes it did D'art,
The High Command tried to forbid it, but old customs were a little too strong that first Christmas.

Even a lot of the junior officers treated their counterparts to Christmas dinner and toasted each other.

There were even stories about a few generals who hosted their fellow generals in fine fashion.

Alas, the practice petered out as the war ground on and man's inhumanity to man took center stage. It went from being a 'gentlemanly' war to a grind where the only victor was Death.


My grandfather was there...
Lance Corporal W.A. Westhead of the 2nd Battalion, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment (Notts and Derby) via the Lancashire Fusiliers.

Joined His Majesty's forces in 1915 at the age of 16 (By lying about his age), fought in Egypt, participated in the Galipoli campaign and was eventually sent to France, where on October 8, 1918 (34 days before the armistice) he received a gunshot wound that would cost him his leg...

He was 19.

Thanks, Fedral, for confirming that story. It's good to recall a more civilized era...

Yeah it's really nice to have a little give and take without it descending rapidly into childish ranting and bomb throwing. I hate confrontations.

I hardly ever read BBB's long cut-and-paste as I prefer to find my own reading, thank you. I don't think it necessary to point any one particular person out either. That's not going to help.

I'm going to be the contrarian in here and note that one of the things I come in to A2K for, is an extra dose of relevant news and information. To find stuff that for some reason or other I hadnt come across myself. So I actually appreciate some of the cut-and-pasting. After all, theres only so much time, and though I try to push myself to look up ever new sites, you do end up following certain routines of what you read on a day-to-day basis. Here, I'll find the rest.

Dont mean that I dont have my own standards of good or bad copy/pastes, tho - fersure.
- For one, use the bleedin "quote" tags, so at least one can immediately see what is original thought and what is import. Takes less space, too.
- Two, dont post the mainstream stuff we'll all have come across. Oh, CNN reports that Iraq has a new PM? No kidding! Better: stuff from journals or countries that we're not likely to have heard of yet.
- Three, yes, its more interesting if it comes with some take on what the poster thinks is relevant or new or surprising about the item.
- Four, keen analysis trumps easy-scoring columns. And journalistic research, source material etc trumps mere editorial punditry.
- Five, I hardly ever read anything out of, say, truthout or free republic. Partisan rants we have enough here already.

Unfortunately, some of those who cut-and-paste the most tend to systematically "violate" at least a coupla of these rules. Still - its with #5 in mind that I am glad about some cut-and-pastes. Sometimes, they just lift the discussion up to a higher level. I mean, no offence, but not many of us are rocket scientists or erudite professors, and I can do without the 67th repetition of the same tired commonplace arguments in yet another new thread about how Iraq is "all about oil" and liberals are "betraying our troops". Sometimes, its better to drag something in that actually has something a little more interesting to propose on the issue at hand - and see if we can discuss that.