Jim might as well give up on FR. It's days of remaining life are few in number.
Because there are literally hundreds of individuals who can take a couple of hundred dollars, buy a used server off E-Bay and Shazaam! -- there will be hundreds of newer, better FRs.
And each and every one of them will immediately get ALL of the members currently contributing to, or freeloading from, FR to come over and sign up. These transferring individuals will all be able to sign-up at every one of the hundreds of newer, better FRs because -- they won't have to contribute any real money -- the operating costs at every site will be so low.
Advertisers are guaranteed to fight each other to sign up to advertise at these newer, better FRs because -- well just because they will! Everybody knows they will!
And everyone will get along wonderfully with each other at all of these wondrous new sites? After all the only reason people don't get along on FR is because of Jim and his silly "principles", that are forced on everyone by his jack-booted, brown-shirted "Mods". The new sites will be la-la lands of smiling, happy customers, singing "cumbaya" and "If I could buy the world a Coke"!
So Jim might as well accept it and either give up and shut down FR completely, or accept the fact that FR will just become a backwater hobby site for him and John, with a few "far right wing crazies" posting about "Principles" and other things nobody really cares about when push comes to shove.
As best I can guess from reading all the posters on this thread, Jim has maybe 2-3 weeks before all the new and improved, "one-day to setup" FR sites blast their way onto the Innertoobs, and zoom their way up the web-site ratings charts.
Soooo, either FR and Jim's efforts will soon die, or .... there are a lot of whining, complaining, wannabees who would rather just keep FR around, reading its content without contributing a cent, and spending their time telling Jim how they could do it better, faster, cheaper, with high quality -like the old days, yadda, yadda, yadda, and who will NEVER, EVER get around to actually firing up those hundreds of newer, better FRs.
But, surely they really, really mean to get those $200 sites fired up pronto, don't you think 2DV?
Let's keep our eye out for these new FRs. If you spot them first, let me know, and I'll do the same for you, ok?
Very well said and true, too.
You are 100% correct. Everyone with $200 to spare can become an FR. Hell, for $400 they can become the next Drudge. Heck, it’d be cheap at 10 times the price.
ROFLOL! Good. Very good.
Damn!
You describe exactly what Lucianne did!