Once upon a time, this was certainly true. I'm not sure that it applies today. The numbers and quality of the articles posted on FR have declined.
There are many reasons, including a few that I have noticed. Of course, because of copyright complaints, FR adopted rules limiting many article posts to excerpts, or perhaps even only an URL link. Paywalls limit our ability to read the entire article without applying cumbersome work arounds. It has become fashionable among Freepers to read only the excerpt or even only the title. Interesting or engaging threads do not follow from these behaviors and limitations.
Many articles don't generate any discussion, or a limited set of responses that resemble Facebook, Twitter, or News Web sites. Comments of a few words, sentence fragments, or 140 character responses have become the norm. I suspect that many long posts in threads are ignored, too much trouble to read those.
Long threads these days are likely to be tributes to recently passed Freepers or the Q Anon threads. At the last election, the election threads were so lame that I had to go to other sources for basic election results and election analysis was weak or completely absent. Gone are the days when a FR election thread was the only place you needed to go to see how the night was going.
Certainly the Left and the Trolls are quite pleased with this trend, and their efforts to disrupt this forum have had an effect along with the other changes that I have mentioned. Will FR return to its halcyon days? Freepers will decide.
You are sadly right......
Average thread is now less than fifty whereas a hit thread use to fifty a minute and would freeze the forum
Still the best forum management
And it’s a club
Breitbart is impersonal and had whacked out algorithms and moderation
Stupid key words cause review
Jewish will call review in an instant even if it’s the topic
Guns too and so on
Anything gay too triggers a review
And mentioning this site will get your post deleted instantly
It’s stupid
There is a group of maybe a dozen posters who reply first on every thread who I’m guessing work there
Posters here don’t read the articles
There it’s worse.....some canard repeated over and over
Although like here most mean well and have their mind fairly right
Just not much on detail let alone nuance
Free republic has loads of competition now but none better or equal as a forum
Some major stories don’t get posted here
We have 5-6 posters who account for 90% of the content and I think one died recently