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>Yeah, I'd say #540 just about covered it all, LOL!

Jim sez: "Sorry folks, but I love the job the moderators are doing and they're here to stay. We are equal opportunity pisser offers. We whack 'em all."

In #737, I observed: "But, the problem is, in any population, there are vastly more bogus people than cool people. When you start squashing the good along with the bad -- as the moderators do and as Jim actually brags about -- then in a very short time you've squished all the cool people right out of the picture and you're still left with tons of bogus people..."

The only addendum I have to add to this is the question: Will Jim still love his moderators and the changes to the forum IF the quarterly fund-raisers start taking longer and longer?

I haven't seen anyone post any figures on how fast the money has been raised in the past versus how fast it is raised now, but those would be interesting stats to compare.

Secondly, even if Jim makes all the money in the world, in a very real way, that would kind of make Jim Robinson the internet forum owner version of George Lucas.

In the original Star Wars, Lucas attempted to create one thing, but compromises of all kinds and production pressures of all kinds ended up forcing Lucas to settle for something that was different from what he had originally intended.
Although the original Star War was different from what Lucas intended, EVERYONE LOVED IT! and as a consequence of everyone loving it, Lucas himself became EMPOWERED to make each additional movie MORE AND MORE in keeping with his personal vision...
And by The Phantom Menace, when George Lucas had complete control over the movie and total power over the digital realization of the images he needed to tell create his personal vision exactly as he intended it, everyone HATED the movie and everyone was really pissed at George for taking something EVERYONE had originally LOVED and turning it into something that JUST SUITED HIM (and his die-hard fans instead of the vastly larger community which had been so touched by the original).

Jim Robinson/George Lucas. Creator symmetry.

Star Wars/Free Republic. Creation symmetry.

Both continue to be big successes. But neither is what it was. And neither is what many believed they could have been if the creator had just tempered his "personal vision" by adapting to the "emergent" situation that had sprung up around him... (One could make the case that that would have been a more conservative thing to do, even if one has the obvious right and option of doing otherwise... )

I think that's all I can think of saying about this topic. I'm sorry I rattled on so much after my initial post began by saying that PEOPLE SHOULDN'T COMPLAIN.

I hope Jim won't be pissed at me for comparing him to George Lucas...

-- KotS