Thanks ITK, you write:
" the BBC when running a current story, will often use the SAME url for the story but keep ammending / updating the page ?"
This is quite correct, not just for the BBC, but for most online news articles. Their content will subtly shift as the story evolves, and may even importantly change. Indeed, there is a website called Newssniffer Revisionista that keeps a backlogue of emerging versions of BBC stories.
www.newssniffer.co.uk/versions
You appear to be suggesting that since the story may change, there is no point posting the link, but you don't say why this should be so. It is true that the article may no longer contain the supporting text, but if anything that is all the more reason to link so that readers can check. You are, of course, free to quote the supporting text as well.
Here are three examples of how links make a difference. Firstly, in a recent case, someone posted the unattributed claim that a congresswoman had been killed; it turned out to be false. Some readers claimed that there had been initial reports of her death. There may have been. But if the poster had linked to the evolving story it would have been easy to verify or falsify the claim. Without the link it was not obvious whether the claim was breaking news or out-of-date already. It took me some time on google before discoving that it was most likely the latter.
Secondly, in another case, BR posted a claim that two people had had sex, and supported it with a link. Unfortunately, the linked story did not support the claim, as readers were quick to point out. They were able to do so because he linked the story. When pressed for further evidence, BR airily directed readers to google for a story which he himself was no longer able to find. You can draw your own conclusions.
Thirdly, in yet another case, about a couple of weeks ago, posters bearing names I had not previously seen started knowingly posting confident assertions, with some lurid details, that a scandal of the measure of the Profumo Affair was about to hit the Sunday papers. If it did, I missed it. I requested links. None appeared.
I invite boarders in general, not particularly you ITK, to please consider the consequence for board readers, and for the reliability and status of the board as a whole, of posting unattributed material, some of which may be quite false.
Best Wishes,
Jim
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