I agree with your interpretation of “primitive” in the article. I also agree with your assessment of freerepublic’s architecture.
A noob recently started a thread suggesting that freepers be able to rate the posts of other freepers. Poor guy. He took it like a man.
I agree with his suggestion, though.
As Kristinn explained on the O’Reilly Factor, freerepublic doesn’t have the budget to moderate freepers like they may want to. A rating system might work to freerepublic’s advantage. Most freepers are governed by a sense of honor that would self replicate in a voluntary ranking system. On the DailyKos, it might have the opposite effect, the more outrageous and vitriolic, the higher your ranking.
Ranking criteria might consist of voting whether a freepers post is thoughtful, sarcastic, sophomoric, humorous, etc and then freepers could eliminate posts irrelevant to their criteria. That way, freepers could eliminate posts like this by setting their preference to eliminate ‘thoughtful’ posts. (c;
As freepers become more and more vitriolic toward certain candidates and their supporters, the negativity discourages discussion and that can’t help freerepublic as a forum to espouse Jim Robinson’s brand of conservatism.
“I agree with his suggestion, though.”
I don’t. The system we have is fine. If someone says something worthwhile, we can bump it or reply. Conversely, if a post is not notable, it is ignored. In my visits to dKos, I’ve seen threads devolve into nothing more than “why did you troll-rate me” whining. We don’t need that.
“A rating system might work to freerepublic’s advantage.”
uh, the only FR “rating system” that matters is the option on the far right:
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yayhoo message boards allow posters to award stars, LOL