Duplicating posts in different threads. Allowed? A good thing?

Is copying and pasting the same lengthy text to every more or less

related thread within the forum policy? Like <a

href=http://www.photo.net/shared/community-member?user_id=425968>this

guy</a> has done in a lot of threads including <a

href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?

msg_id=0071m2">this</a> and <a href="http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-

and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=0071g8">this</a>.<br><br>

 

Isn't this a waste of disk space and bandwidth at least and I am

curious as to what would happen if everybody begins doing the same.

I didn't read the whole content of his post, but, seeing as the question posted in both threads is effectively the same, it seems fairly logical that an answer could be the same in both cases. And the poster of question 1 might well not be reading the repsonses to question 2.

 

Also, I'm sure the disk space and bandwidth used that post is nothing compared to a thumbnail-sized jpeg in the gallery!

 

But of course it's up to the forum moderators to decide what goes and what doesn't.

I would not allow it in a forum I moderate. The best thing is to post once and reference elsewhere.

Umit, I never realized this. I will say that the person in question is extremely helpful and seems to have helped a lot of people. Is it annoying? yeah, a little, but <U>I think the help and advice he gives far outweighs the little annoyance.</U>

My 2 cents.

AJM

All I can say is I was tempted to create a library of "standard" answers myself. The same basic questions seem to get asked over and over and over again and there is no reason they couldn't be answered with a stock reply. Seems like nobody bothers to read anything here, they just ask away because they can and that is the easiest thing to do. If you tell them to do some research or don't answer their question in a "courteous" manner some people get pissed and cop an attitude. These are almost always people who haven't paid a dime to get in here so, as far as I'm concerned, they got what they paid for. <p>I see absolutely nothing wrong with what Mr. Peled did.

I have nothing personal and I am sure he is a helpful guy otherwise.

 

But if everyone broadens every specific question to "which brand" and comes with a thick white paper or his life's story on that, and copies-pastes it to every more or less related thread in sight, I see a few problems in that:

 

- Poster expecting a specific answer must read these first. Lot of copy paste posts will obviously choke a thread.

 

- Why not provide a link to the previous instance of your masterpiece but copy-paste it? So that others read it if they wish to. Nothing new has been contributed to database, not even a word.

 

- This has the potential of becoming a trend, among those who assigned themselves as volunteer marketers of their preffered brand, because it is easy. An action will create reactions and I don't think photo.net should become host of an amateur marketing channel or copy-paste flavored version of ever existing brand wars.

 

I by no means advocate a strict moderation on that, though I think a moderator can declare that they won't/can't do anything about it, but it is also not appropriate and welcome either.