Sometimes caution is the better part of valor...you asked fer it.
"Now, since our FRiend goldilucky has removed herself from consideration from such wicked endeavors, I must nominate the MUDster for this role. Any objections?"
I OBJECT!!! Yer Outta Order!! Yer Outta Order!! NO, Yer Outta Order!! You Can't Handle the TRUTH!!
LOL...MUD
BTW...I prefer to maintain my IndependentGadFlyStatus, however diotima's sending me some stuff on how to git this OldDominion FReeper Chapter up and runnin'!!
"After the corrupt sob was reelected, I became determined that I was gonna do all I could to see him impeached, so I wrote the forum software and launched the Free Republic forum in February 1997. I was the only poster for a few months, but I kept sending my URL to search engines and trolled the news groups by reposting articles from the forum and eventually I picked up a few readers... and eventually some of the readers got the courage to try posting.
"The forum went well, and over the summer and through the fall of 1997 we continued to pickup more and more readers and we started accumulating a lot of hits. Sometime during that Fall, we had gained so many readers that our traffic began impacting my ISP (which was my old company which had been donating the resources for us). Our hits and our bandwidth usage was dragging down their system, so they eventually gave me an ultimatum to either pay them $700 per month or find another provider.
"Well, I was near broke at the time [Pink Floyd], didn't have much income and this was just a hobby so I thought it was probably all over. Then one of our posters (The Duke) wrote me. He was using a network service for his company and he thought they could supply us with a dedicated server for as little as $300 per month. That was a reasonable rate, but I still couldn't afford it. The Duke suggested that we ask the readers if they wanted Free Republic enough to donate the money to pay the expenses and keep it running. So he ran a thread and sure enough, the readers said that it was important to keep Free Republic going and so they began sending in donations. I ordered the server and we were soon running. Thus the practice of reader funding of Free Republic was born."
Actually, the first time I began lurking on FR.com was back when Connie Hair was announcing some FReeper Rally and talked to El Rushbo fer 2-3 segments as I recall. I didn't go to whichever Rally she was promotin', but I did like the raucous discourse that I witnessed on the Forum, and I ended up registering four years ago yesterday!!
FReegards...MUD