No - and that's not the issue - and you know it.
"Let me ask you this: Have you ever done an analysis of a lot of information, compiling a lot of different sources into one place?"
Yup.
"- you know, the formal writing process?"
Oh, please enlighten me on where this "formal writing process" is laid out, chapter and verse.
"If so, how did you save your draft here on Free Republic, so you could come back to it later?"
Why on earth would I want to do that?
"Where did you first go to publish any photos or documentation to the web so that you could link to it eventually on Free Republic?"
Again, Why? You think something has to be published before it's published?
"If Free Republic is serious about this being a place for people to post original content it needs to have workable ways for serious writers to do these things."
Somehow, between my Desktop with it's 1TB drive and 1.5TB external, my Laptop with its 1.5TB drive, numerous thumbdrives, three e-mail servers and two word processing programs I think I'll be able to get by without a storage utility being available on FR.
"Why is that fine and dandy until you get somebody besides Dan Rather trying to get information out to the public?"
It's not fine and dandy for Dan Rather or anyone else in the MSM.
In fact, I happen to believe that their insistence on excerpts and links is a violation of Fair Use. But whether or not that is the case, it is certainly the result of hostility toward FR and our goals here.
So ask yourself this - Why should conservative bloggers and investigative journalists of the "New Media" show FreeRepublic that same hostility?
When Gunner, or other FReepers ask for full content here, they are paying the poster (blogger) a high compliment suggesting that the work may be worth having full exposure on FreeRepublic. You claim that your goal is to "get the information out to the public" (and I suppose extinguish those flames consuming the country.) So which do you suppose is more likely read in full - an article posted in full (with hotlinks to appropriate video at the original source) or a snippet directing the (wary) reader to an unknown blog?
Your notion that somehow the blog is on the giving end of this equation is beyond laughable.
Notice who never showed up to join in the thread?
Yes, you have to publish stuff like photos somewhere else before you can publish it here.
On my blog I post original content. Wordpress will do all the html for me and I can concentrate on what I am analyzing/disclosing rather than having to wade through HTML procedures. It makes sense to use a platform like Wordpress to publish analysis with original content, or analysis that draws from many different sources.
If you assemble content like I and others do using Wordpress, Word, WordPerfect, etc, you end up having to RE-DO everything just to get it to show up correctly on Free Republic - and that’s AFTER you’ve already posted your images somewhere else.
I have spent HOURS and HOURS trying to get my content to format correctly here just so people don’t have to click an extra time. Why? I realize a click is a traumatic thing to have to go through - way more than any of the diligent folks here who want to save the country can be expected to do. So the people who are busting their butts to do the investigation and analysis have to also bust their necks making sure nobody else has to invest so much as a click. Because the people who love this country and would do anything to save her are not willing to click an extra time.
BUT as you folks would have it, we should ask them to click 20 times just because you sneer at people who take the time to ASSEMBLE information so people can spend their energy ANALYZING, COMPREHENDING, and TESTING the content, rather than giving up in frustration at the 20 clicks required to even get the basic content because all you can post at FR is link after link after link.
If they won’t click once, they’re never gonna click 20 times. And that’s the point, isn’t it? We should just brainlessly accept the “analysis” by Dan Rather types, because we’re too stinkin’ lazy and too stinkin’ PROTECTIONIST to accept anybody but Dan Rather trying to point us to information that’s worth processing, and dots that need to be analyzed for connections.
Not wanting to have to re-invent the wheel every day by spending hours and hours that will put investigators way behind on research that is sometimes very, very time-sensitive is NOT “hostility toward the goals of FR”. Demanding that research grind to a halt in order to humor those who just don’t like blogs IS HOSTILE to the goals of FR, if the goal of FR is to actually bring conservatism, truth, and the rule of law back to this country.
You want Sharyl Atkisson talking to Benghazi witnesses, or do you want her typing in HTML code over and over again to please your petty highness? That’s the principle I’m talking about. The couch-potatoes can complain about extra clicks, but people who truly understand the situation we’re in would be ASHAMED to force the boots on the ground (such as Sharyl Atkisson or anybody else who is doing the heavy investigative lifting) to waste time laboring over HTML code just because they (the couch potatoes) are too stinkin’ lazy and snobby to make an extra click. Geez, do we really have to be spoon-fed every single minute of the day?
That’s why I have said that I can’t see any difference between what you and others like you are doing here (silencing the truth and making the lamestream media the only sources that get exposure) and what the Obama thugs would want done.
I can’t help but ask, “Why?” Why such hostility towards those who have done everybody else the service of collecting information into one place and who point out on Free Republic where that collection can be seen with good formatting and so that 20 clicks aren’t necessary?
You have no idea what I’ve sacrificed for the research I’ve done. No. Idea. Why make me and others like me re-invent the wheel every time, as if we’ve got nothing better to do - AND force every Freeper to click 20 times - just so you won’t libel us as money-seekers (I don’t get a dime for what I post to my blog, nor for any clicks there)?
The past few years have been very disillusioning for me. Not because the enemy stinks. I’ve always known the enemy stinks. What really stinks is the people who claim to be on the side of the things I believe in, but do nothing but obstruct, mock, and disable the people who are actually in the ring duking it out with the enemy. It’s sort of like the way the regime treats our military, and it is vile and disgusting to watch. WAY beyond just “couch potato quarterback” laziness. The battle for our country is NOT being waged by people on the sidelines tsk- tsk-ing over the unkempt appearance of the one sweating it out in fierce battle with the enemy. It’s being waged by people who have already sacrificed money, reputation, family time, and the sanctimonious comfort of being a critic, in order to actually FIND the information and GET IT OUT THERE so everybody else can use it to fight the enemy.
There’s a poster I used to have on my room in high school. It’s a bunch of ducklings all mixed up close together. The poster says: DO SOMETHING! LEAD, FOLLOW, OR GET OUT OF THE WAY!
I don’t have time for people whose only job here at FR is to get in the way of people who are bringing forward information that deserves to be mulled over. We’ve got enough regime-bots to do that as it is. If it looks like a regime-bot, walks like a regime-bot, and quacks like a regime-bot...... (you finish the rest).