FreeRepublic is a microcosm of the whole internet, which in turn is a significant part of what let’s call the “information universe”.
And there’s a fundamental problem you must grapple with when fishing for information. Anywhere — the library, the Internet, FreeRepublic.
Namely:
Do you cast a wide net? Advantage: you catch more and miss less. Disadvantage: a LOT of what you catch is trash, and it’s time-consuming to filter. Also, casting a wide net implies a certain confidence in your abilities TO filter.
Or, do you go into a prottected cove and fish (with a necessarily smaller net)? (Metaphor for letting someone else do your prefiltering for you.) The advantages and disadvantages are swapped.
Neither philosophy is “good” or “bad”. They’re just different.
Me? In most situations I prefer the wide-net open-water approach, because I have confidence in my own research skills (honed over time), and because I distrust the motives of anyone who presumes to filter what I see.
This even extends to yadda yadda blogpimp commentary about the same old news articles — because, occasionally, a blogger presents a slightly different viewpoint that gets me thinking in a different, useful way.
Or, as you point out, the “market blog” guesswork commentary. Well, pal, I got news for you — even the “experts” disagree big-time about what we’re headed for economically speaking. ESPECIALLY in the market commentary I like to cast that wide net for new viewpoints — and at the same time I distrust ALL of it.
Your mileage may vary.
I am a wide-net caster, which is why I just use the “all articles” feed and look over every one.
I also can read quickly, but I can’t read through a link without actually clicking the link. It slows me down, I get caught by filters, I lose the train of thought, and then in the comments you get a lot of people who comment only on what is excerpted.
Which means that we would ALL be better off if the entire content was posted here. Which, in the case of bloggers, is perfectly possible.
So, any blogger who doesn’t post their entire entry is inconveniencing the entire community of FreeRepublic. It’s not that they are posting, it’s that they are posting in an inconvenient way.
So, why are they doing this, and why should we all be happy about it?
The market blogs are an issue only to the degree that when there is an actual NEWS story about something that has happened, it can be very important. But when there is a hyperbolic headline suggesting something disastrous has just happened, and it’s in NEWS, but then it turns out it’s just someone’s fantasy blog post, it is like the boy crying wolf, you can’t ignore it but it makes it harder to find the real news.