Posted on 10/25/2001 8:59:47 PM PDT by Jim Robinson
Ok, this is a free for all thread. Come in and take your best shots. I promise I won't delete it or get upset. Get it out of your systems and then we will see if we can solve the problems. There always several sides to any story and several possible solutions to any problem. I'd like to hear them all and I'd like to solve as many problems as we can and get this forum kicking socialist butt again instead of kicking each other. So, please anyone with a complaint or a problem or a possible solution, (moderators, posters, FAB, everyone) please chime in. Thanks, Jim
This is an untruth. All FReepers of whatever political persuasion were welcome and with equal standing. In fact, the demise of Reunion was due to Arator's refusal to yield to pressure from every faction for preferential treatment and calls for the suppression by the host of their opponents. It was this failure which led Arator to give Jim Rob the benefit of the doubt for his censorship of the Brigades during the campaign and apologize to him for the stridency of his former critique.
Unfortunately, FR's recent lurch toward war fascism and his rebanishment for dissenting from same has caused Arator to suspend the benefit of his doubt for the time being. But, he is greatly encouraged by the openness offered by Jim Rob to all by this thread and is always hopeful that FR might one day return to her former freedom and glory, for he loves this place and always has.
There are some threads -- War on Drugs, Israel, to name but two subjects -- that begin as entirely reasonable discussions. People differ, but they do so by in a spirit of rational, civil, polite debate.
Then one of the participants, usually a new arrival on the thread, summons a standing a posse of like-minded souls and debate is buried beneath a deluge of abuse. These folks have already made up their minds, and their sole goal isn't to persuade -- it's to silence. that, and maybe to provoke an opponent into the sort intemperate words that are apt to get one banned.
Instead of argument/counterargument, the thread degenerates to, "Why don't you crawl back under the rock with your [insert pot-smoking/palestinian/libertarian etc] buddies." This is repeated in endless vituperative variations until reasonable souls retreat to private e-mails and the entire purpose of public discussion is defeated.
Now I'm not suggesting the flame posses should be silenced for the mere act of disagreeing with another Freeper, but it would be nice if some of the gang bangers were reminded every now and then that free speech is almost as important as property rights. (There, that should get a debate going).
When an organized barrage of flamers incinerates a thread, we all lose.
One last thing: A penalty box listing banned or suspnded Freepers and the reasons for their enforced exile might help to guide the rest of us along the paths of righteousness.
A spell check would be neat, too. I had a retarded one at the office that translated "frosty the snowman" into "frosty the samoan." Some posts might make more sense if they could be run through a device that did the same thing!
that got the thread deleted about--Glimpses of future events--some prophecy sort of issue I even forget the details of now. I started it before work. . . a few interesting replies came in and by the time I got home, it was deleted.
I'd have AT LEAST liked to have read what was there before it was deleted--seems it could have been dumped easily into a private reply email. . . and I'd have preferred to have an understanding of the logic for deleting such when a lot more outrageous and even a lot more illogical and more destructive to FR, to the U.S.A stuff goes unhindered routinely around here--which is fine to a point--a diverse free-for-all tends to at least produce a lot of ideas--some of which can be priceless and well worth the bother and risk.
that got the thread deleted about--Glimpses of future events--some prophecy sort of issue I even forget the details of now. I started it before work. . . a few interesting replies came in and by the time I got home, it was deleted.
I'd have AT LEAST liked to have read what was there before it was deleted--seems it could have been dumped easily into a private reply email. . . and I'd have preferred to have an understanding of the logic for deleting such when a lot more outrageous and even a lot more illogical and more destructive to FR, to the U.S.A stuff goes unhindered routinely around here--which is fine to a point--a diverse free-for-all tends to at least produce a lot of ideas--some of which can be priceless and well worth the bother and risk.
There is a "Self-Search" option in the article header and footer to get your past postings. This feature has recently been sped up and format spiffed up dramatically - way cool.
As you pointed out, Arator left, giving TONS of parting shots that exhibitted EXACTLY that attitude, and then immediately set up an "alternate" discussion site where he controlled every post with an iron fist.
But as I said, that won't even be glimpsed by this forebrain-deficit folks.
You are as corrupt as he is.
Would it be at all possible to create a two-part title field for article postings? I know it's necessary to quote an article's headline as-is, so that others can easily run searches to make sure the piece they're about to post isn't already available. However, as a former headline writer myself, I also know that headlines alone often do a horrible job of relating just what the article is actually about (especially if the headline writer was in a punny mood that day), and that for Freeper purposes, what we consider the truly important part of a given article may be buried rather deep down in the story, and the given headline may not have anything to do with that point that we are trying to highlight.
I usually get around this by posting the headline followed by a better description in parenthesis, such as these two posts I made recently:
Stop This Benefit! (Pseudo-"review" of NYC Concert is Salon's Meanest, Most Racist Article EVER!) [Note that the headline "Stop This Benefit!" alone would not have made any sense to anyone; my added title was absolutely necessary.]
Numbers Vary in Tallies of the Victims (Could There Be As Few As 2400-2900 WTC Dead?) [The headline alone would explain the gist of the article, but not its seriousness: Tallies of what victims? There are all sorts of victims of all sorts of things every day! Only with my added headline could I make clear we were talking about the WTC attack itself, and also point out that were talking about a HUGE decrease in the number of dead, not merely some quibbles about whether it's 5,845 or 5,846.]
Now, obviously I had no trouble tacking on my own explanations in these two examples, but I would like to see the concept made official here. Not just because current rules can easily be interpreted as saying you ought not to post anything BUT the headline as exactly printed, ever, but also because often, the original headline is so long that the poster doesn't have enough characters left to tack on a comprehendible explanation. If there were an extra, second title field specifically for Poster explanation, both problems would be eliminated. Of course, the second field would be optional, since often the original headline IS a perfectly fine explanation of the article.
How does one achieve 100% in LIFE?
Begin by noting the following.
IF:
A = 1
B = 2
C = 3
D = 4
E = 5
F = 6
G = 7
H = 8
I = 9
J = 10
K = 11
L = 12
M = 13
N = 14
O = 15
P = 16
Q = 17
R = 18
S = 19
T = 20
U = 21
V = 22
W = 23
X = 24
Y = 25
Z = 26
Then:
H A R D W O R K =
8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = Only 98%
Similarly,
K N O W L E D G E =
11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = Only 96%
But interesting (and as you'd expect),
A T T I T U D E =
1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%
This is how you achieve 100% in LIFE.
But EVEN MORE IMPORTANT TO NOTE (or REALIZE), is
B U L L S H * T =
2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%
So now you know what all those high-priced consultants, upper management, and motivational speakers really mean when they want to exceed 100%!
It's obviously beginning to pose a problem for you.
I am but a guest here and would hate to be shown the door before the party is over but would feel like I'd been thrown off the roof drunk if I found myself just "locked out" !
Ya'll Stay Safe and Jim thanks for a great site that I've enjoyed since 98. Thank You Sir !
There. I've been wanting to say that for a long time. I wanted to start a thread on it, but I thought the Moron Moderators would pull it. And here's why: they don't understand sarcasm.
The point of the title is that nobody has seen even ONE body. Not one. Oh, we saw one falling from one of the towers. But not an actual dead body on the ground. This has been the most sanitized, antiseptic assault I have ever seen. Sure, we saw the towers in a smoking heap. But towers are not bodies. Since you said nothing would be deleted, that's what I've been wanting to say.
Nobody died in the twin towers collapse. They just magically VANISHED. That's it. Gone. Poof.
My question is, why are we sanitizing this atrocity? We've all seen photos of dead bodies from the Vietnam War, and the World Wars, and the millions of Jews who were slaughtered. Why can't we even see our own dead from the WTC assault? Or the Pentagon assault? Or the Pittsburgh crash? These images would show the horror of the assaults to the entire world.
Everyone remembers the pictures of the Vietnamese girl running naked with her arms outstretched. That brought the horrors of war home to us in vivid imagery. We have all seen pictures of Jews executed and then falling into a pit. Again, a horrific sight. This imagery is something that will never leave us. And it shouldn't. It is something that we need to see so that we will never forget what happened.
Which is why I'm wondering, where is the imagery of humans in these terrorist assaults? I would be just as horrified to see dead bodies as anyone else. The point is that there are none. And I'm wondering why. Why are they hiding them from us? It makes death seem so clean somehow -- that we can lose 7,000 souls, and not a body to be seen. It's as if they all just floated up to Heaven.
Except the terrorists, of course. I don't believe in Hell, which is unfortunate. I think Earth is bad enough. But I wish there were such a place as Hell. These creeps truly deserve it.
I say, let us see the bodies, so that we will have some tangible imagery of these assaults. As it is now, I fear their absence is making some of us take these assaults too lightly. Some people (Liberals) need to see them so that they will know why we are fighting. Until then, it almost seems as if we are fighting only because two of our towers were hit. The collapsed towers is a horrific imagery, as far as it goes, but it doesn't go far enough. No bodies, no reason for war. No lasting imagery of the horrors of that day. And most networks have even banned moving images of the planes hitting the towers, sanitizing it even further. And my question is, Why?
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