Your experience was with the Old Freerepublic, where people engaged in current events posted articles of interest to conservatives and initiated a discussion with other members of the forum. Duplicate posts and vanity posts were discouraged and policed by the members. Opinions were expected to be accompanied by information that supported the idea presented. Differences in opinion were sorted out through reasoned arguments, with many weak ideas discarded, while other arguments became stronger and more widely held.
This forum was the best gathering place for the giants of the conservatism movement as well as the enthusiastic amateur. Experts in every aspect of human endeavor weighed in and helped to enlighten all of us and along the way debunked some pretty silly notions. But, no more. FR is just another social media wannabe cluttered by 140 character responses. No one reads the articles anymore, many don’t even bother to read the headline. They certainly don’t read any responses longer than two sentences. We really aren’t any different than the mindless medial sites with their pages after pages of clueless comments. (Most will not read this comment for sure).
It was nice while it lasted.
Typical DIMocRAT.
What was nice? (;>
You think it’s that bad? I was thinking maybe we had chased off some of the folks who did some of the heavy lifting around here. I may have been guilty of that to a certain extent myself. Maybe that combined with some over-moderation of the sidebars and some inane nonsense where people chase ‘blog pimps’ away for daring to post content (for free!) on the site.
I know I post here a lot less than I used to, but I do still come to the site several times a day to read the articles. It did used to be feasible to use FR as your sole news source and not miss anything. These days, that isn’t the case. Many times, something (at least somewhat important) will happen and I’ll get it pushed to my phone via Polutico or something like that and sometimes it never even shows up here.
Speak for yourself. If you don't like it you can leave.