I’ve never seen a quicker, easier, fairer, better way to catch up on political news and news in general than FR to this day. If libs wanted to actually be informed and know things months in advance they could stop by here a few times a day.
FR is a superb resource, and Freepers in person are a bright, lively sort.
Another value of FR is the way the COMMENTS on a thread are done.
You can follow the strings of conversations easily, seeing WHO responded to WHOM.
Other websites, I can’t tell what the hell is going on or who is talking to whom. There is no reference number you can use to identify a single post. Mostly it’s just people spouting their thoughts with no concern for anyone else.
Paragraph indentation is done for no apparent reason, and profanity is rampant.
Most websites are cookie cutter clones and maybe people get used to them, I don’t know.
I do know FR has always (after it got to the WWW) been the same (minor changes were made, but nothing major) and best of all is that the ‘subjects’ of threads are not limited to just one theme.
I’ve also noticed that the skills of FR users are way above people that post on other sites. That we can post images, use graphics, gifs, and in general the entire ability of HTML is above and beyond what most sites limit one to.