To: JohnGalt; John Robinson
A free market place of ideas can be scary but I believe the cream always rises and the worst folks generally are not that talented or compelling. You reiterated what I said well enough, but you didn't offer the site owner any help. Why comment derisively at post #2 were you unwilling or not prepared to answer (I doubt that) the question you would inevitably incite?
As to our common ground. An overabundance of mud makes the most useful thread too much to wade through to bother separating the true challenges from amongst the muck.
JohnRob is rumored to have a personalized troll button awaiting in the wings. That offers one solution. Do you think it a worthy enough idea to pass along?
69 posted on
10/27/2003 12:53:09 PM PST by
Avoiding_Sulla
(You can't see where we're going when you don't look where we've been.)
To: Avoiding_Sulla
JohnRob is rumored to have a personalized troll button awaiting in the wings. That offers one solution. Do you think it a worthy enough idea to pass along?
-Sulla-
Great idea. All those who lack the guts for debate could just tune it out.
- I wonder, do they realize that it is they themselves who would end up being ignored?
80 posted on
10/27/2003 1:04:06 PM PST by
tpaine
(I'm trying to be 'Mr Nice Guy', but Arnie won, & politics as usual lost. Yo!)
To: Avoiding_Sulla
I'm not sure what it would solve.
In the early days, we never had a problem identifying the Stormfront/National Alliance folks and they were promptly banned. Though an interesting example of the problem here is that it was Stormfront who practically single-handedly kept the Bobby-Ann Williams/Bill Clinton love child story alive only because they had scanned in the photo from George Caprozi Jr's 1992 Clinton book. The picture was posted on FR and no one thought anything of it.
I even supported the eventual banning of Michael Rivero. Its fun to have a books and tapes guy on a web site but he really was selling too hard and FR was free advertising.
The real problem was the loss of some of the best skilled web researchers who could whip out a fully linked dissection of government speak within hours. That came with the arrival of an active number of pro-war posters who don't even claim to be that conservative or libertarian. They do so honestly and openly (see Chancellor Palpatine or Poohbah) so I have no issue with them, but they yelled loudly against dissent and brought little to the table in the way of research talents.
You see, the effort to demonize trolls, created a group think issue that effects the best right leaning news forum on the web. Group think is the enemy of 'original work;' original work being the stuff that came from bcspecht, Uncle Bill, Wallaby and all these people I never met but read religiously back in the early days.
83 posted on
10/27/2003 1:06:20 PM PST by
JohnGalt
(Attention Pseudocons: Wilsonianrepublic.com is still available)
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson