Have you ever been enticed by a headline to read an article — the headline is not necessarily “click bait” but may still be catchy or interesting — only to find that what you are reading seems very familiar…
…as though you have read it before?
Has That Article You Are Reading Has Been Recycled? One Way to Tell Is…
No, déjà vu is not what you are experiencing. Rather, some “bloggers” will take what is called an evergreen article — which is an article whose information is not sensitive to time — and simply release the article again at the simple click of a button.
Publishing the same evergreen article several times without any editing is not unusual — but how can you tell that an article has been recycled?
Simply scroll down to the Comments section of an article and view the dates on which the comments posted. If an article was released today but the comments date back to 2017, the article has obviously been recycled.
Summary
Recycling articles is not necessarily bad or unethical; but that practice is generally the weblog version of a rerun — and its occurrence is especially pervasive this time of the year when many people are enjoying the holiday season.
Although I have written articles with plenty of links to articles which I have already written, I have never written a rehash or a recap or a summary, as I originally wrote in this article on Sunday, January 18, 2015…
…although due to the multiple times The Gate has moved between FlyerTalk and BoardingArea over the years, there are times where I will repost an article with some fresh thoughts so that it is not merely a cut-and-paste job.
I can understand why other “bloggers” post weekly summaries, rehashes and recaps from past articles. I know that it is impossible to keep up with everything everyone writes on their weblogs; and it is easy for readers to miss something. Moreover, new readers can view articles about which they otherwise would not known have existed.
Conversely, there are times where I post an article at one time where you may miss it and not see it. Even I do not always remember everything among the almost 8,900 articles I have written in 14.5 years — so I unfortunately do not always call attention to certain topics about which I have written in the past which are potentially helpful or interesting to you despite my continuously striving to do so.
There are some creative ways to have the topic matter of an article repeated while still keeping it “fresh”: post a new update; relate it to a different topic, include a poll for starters…
…and maybe even create a menu listing past articles — perhaps with a certain structure so that you may check them at your leisure — such as listing all of the articles posted within the past week without posting a rehash article.
Please let me know what you believe would be the best way for me to ensure that you read articles posted at The Gate which may be of interest to you by listing your suggestions in the Comments section below.
Thank you in advance.
Photograph ©2017 by Brian Cohen.
