Star InactiveStar InactiveStar InactiveStar InactiveStar Inactive
 
I've seen multipostings a lot of time in foren but most of the time the poster doesn't understand why he doesn't get any reply or flame replies.  In the following article I explain the reason for this and what's the difference between a multiposting and a crossposting.
 

The terms Multiposting and Crossposting are commonly used in newsgroups. But they are also used in foren in the same sense.


If you post the same question in other foren at the same time that's called a multiposting. You have an issue and expect to get an answer for your issue more quickly  if you post the same question/issue in multiple foren. You quickly will get get reply in every forum  - the community is online and tries to help you - and there will start discussions how to help you - but no poster knows about the replies on other foren. If they would know about the other postings in the other forenthey can use this information and may speed up the solution process.

I've seen threads, where in one forum a solution for the issue was found but in the other foren the question was also posted a lot of people discussed how to solve the issue which actually was already solve in the other forum. The author of the Multiposting didn't care about this and didn't force the useless discussions to stop.
 
It also happens that in the different foren different suggestions how to solve the issue were discussed and the poster tried to merge all the sugestions. This created such a mess that finally no suggested way to fix the issued worked because different strategies to solve the issue were intermixed. So you managed to get no useful solution for your issue because you created a Multiploting and confused the community.
 
That's noy efficient use of community resources and that's why noboy likes multipostings. Everybody usually likes to help you but feel to be fooled if they detect they're working on a multiposting.

In contrast it's called a crossposting if you take care to create crosslinks in every posting you created to the other postings and in addition monitor all postings and finish the discussion and refer to the final solution if your issue was solved. That's in particular helpful for people who face the same issue and find the crossposting and are linked to the posting which contains the solution. You're responsibe to synchronize and update all crosspostings. That's not the most efficient way to use the community resources but it's at least no waste of resources. But nevertheless crosspostings should be used only if it's very important.

I personally accept a valid crossposting if after a given time (e.g. 1 week) you didn't get any helpful hint. I also accept a very important  issue. But be aware that  readers of your crosspostings have different opinions on this.
 
My personal advice:

1) Don't use multipostings. A lot of people visit multiple forums and they will detect your multiposting. Your nic name will be tagged as somebody who creates multipostings. Don't  be surprised if nobody answers your future postings.

2)  Use a crossposting only if it's very important for you.  You have to synchronize and crosslink your postings.

3) Crosslink all multipostings and update the postings if there are new results. In particular newcomers in the community create multipostings by error. If you follow this advice you make clear you understand now the difference of a multiposting and a crossposting and you will take care of your multipostings and will be carefull next time.
 
 
Add comment

*** Note ***

Comments are welcome. But in order to reject spam posts please consider following rules:
  1. Comments with string http are rejected with message You have no rights to use this tag
  2. All comments are reviewed by hand and thus it usually takes one day until a comment will be published.