John: I remain willing to serve as an ad hoc Bump List Manager if it would help. I could clean out the dead wood "oops i screwed up please delete this" lists, keep the big list up-to-date with comprehendable descriptions of each lists, links to bump list graphics, etc, if it would help any. I remain a giant bump-list fan, as do most Freepers, I believe.
I disagree with the "bump list stuff is one big flaw" unless there's more to it than needing database maintenence. I'm fairly new to FR and have figured out that the Bump List Register is a very useful tool. I happen to be a database manager and I know that indexing articles significantly reduces the number of searches conducted. You get a much more quick, thorough, and accurate result in clicking on 'media news' in the register to find related articles than you do by searching for specific instances in the titles.
I like clicking on the 'US:Illinois' topic to see what's in the news in my state. The 'Topic' and 'keyword' process is a great idea in the fact that it is such an easy and simple sort group but there are two problems that I want to point out:
There are articles related to PETA where 'PETA' does not exist in the title. I can google search FR for keywords like 'Hillary' and 'New York Times' but I could google search it to death and still not find anything on 'biased media'. Clicking on a keyword in a thread gives me a much more thorough result than searching for it. The problem is that I have to search for articles to find that keyword. There is not an accessible keyword index page similar to the Bump List Register.
Also, the topics and keywords get abused and a good example would be adding 'US:Illinois' to a thread that's about Colin Powell and the UN. I say mega dittos to Timesink... the dead wood needs to be cleaned up.
I'm a big fan of the Bump List Register too and I'd like to either see the Bump List Register expanded to be more detailed or revise the keywords to be accurate and accessible. I would be willing to help out Timesink on the cleanup procedure.