Lets do this excellent post by Prodigal Son again!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1054639/posts?page=1363#1363 American Freepers- come on. At any given minute there are several thousand active freepers. What we do has a cost. For those several thousand freepers to get on here and post their views costs about $20,000 per month.
Think about what we get for that cost. We've got round the clock tech service. When FR goes down, it is very quickly corrected. That means there is a human being awake at all times monitoring FR and its usability.
When some liberal troll gets on FR and starts posting pornography and other unacceptable things- they are banned quickly. This means a human being is sitting there somewhere monitoring the threads and complaints as well as interceding in arguments between honest to God Freepers.
When you want to research a subject and you enter a term in the search engine, you are using a device that cost human effort and ingenuity to develop. We have a great search engine here. It's not perfect, but you go elsewhere and use theirs. Ours is superior by leagues.
At any given minute on FR you can find people from all walks of life and from all sorts of different countries. This a diversified, complex community of people. We get a lot accomplished here and we have a vast network of resources at our beck and call.
If you buy a newspaper every day, think about how much more functionality and usability you get from FR. If we have between 3 and 4 thousand regular users and untold number of lurkers, is it not worth it to pay 6- 8 dollars per month for the value we get?
I think it is.
FR delivers much more value than you could ever quanitify in dollars and cents. Think about an organization like MoveOn.org being unopposed. They get millions from George Soros. We at FR depend upon the donation from the average guy.
Let's get this fundraiser behind us. If nothing else, look on it as pure selfishness. I have had arguments on FR with other Freepers that have spanned out over hundreds of posts. A couple of times, I have gone to the trouble to investigate exactly how much I have posted in these arguments. For example, in a recent, good natured argument with Freeper discostu about the Matrix, I posted over 15,000 words on one thread and so did he. Combined with the other comments on the thread, this amounts to a small novel. And that was just one thread I was involved with. How much does that cost?
My point is- we get our money's worth here. Even the most obtuse of us can use this place to promote his views. I think it's worth a few dollars per month. If we were to all pledge to kick in a few dollars per month, we could put these fundraisers behind us. I, personally, think it's worth it.
1,363 posted on 01/10/2004 6:11:56 PM PST by Prodigal Son