Posted on 06/25/2002 3:42:21 AM PDT by Jim Robinson
The following email is being circulated to our members by various disgruntled former FReepers:
Subject: The Future of Our Free RepublicDear Fellow Free Republic Member,
Many of us at Free Republic are distressed by the extraordinary level of censorship that has been so obviously going on. It is very obvious that individual posts, entire threads, and the entire work of members who have been highly regarded are disappearing into a Memory Hole.
Scores of us have organized an e-mail network that is independent of the communication controls presently, and sadly, being used at our Free Republic. We have carefully documented the unmistakeable evidence that most of the posts, threads, and posters that are vaporized completely are overwhelmingly targeted for their political stance on the Right. These are not Leftwingers. These are not even Middle-of-the-Roaders. These are not disruptors. These are not foul-mouthed delinquents. These are fellow patriots on the Right who disagree with the controllers of FR on specific issues that are now hotly debated by the Right. We have documented that FR will parade before you, as if to hide all of the great posters whose work has been destroyed, a straw-man delinquent that has been banned. This is deceptive.
Treating these fellow patriots on the Right so shabbily is not right. As shabbily as those banned into the Memory Hole are being treated, the most shabbily treated of all are all of the good folks on Free Republic themselves. We came here for honest debate. Free Republic advertised itself as a Forum for honest debate. Without that honest debate...everything at Free Republic becomes shabby.
We can do much better. As a measure of how intense the simmering feelings have gotten among members on this unjustifiable use of deleting, censoring, and banning please link to the following thread. You will notice that one simple and sincere plea from one of our finest members has spontaneously touched off a prairie fire of approximately 500 posts in a mere 18 hours. If it isn't Memory Holed this thread may shoot into the thousands.
If you would like to receive anonymous updates of information concerning the hundreds of Freepers who have networked via e-mail to restore the wonderful honest debate to Free Republic, just drop an e-mail of just one or two words if you like for extreme brevity to:
StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com
And, here's that link back to the snowballing thread at FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/704701/posts
Thank you so much for giving your thought to this vital matter for our Internet home.
Sincerely, StopCensoringUs@hotmail.com
What an eloquent response.
I read the opus of one person who was banned recently who vociferously complained "I have been a member since 1998!!!"
Well, good for him. But that does not constitute a license to steal, does it? Nor does that mean that new posters are somehow lesser human beings, unfit morally, and lack the same access to this wonderful forum than anybody else.
I quit going to the drug threads because of the temper tantrums. You can't talk to those people rationally.
I still like the moderating-down method. Instead of deleting the message, you knock it down below the level of the standard reader. They see their message but everyone else has to drop a level to see it. Ignorance is bliss.
I've never had any complaints with this forum. I was never a member of an online discussion group before I joined FR and I lurked FR for a long time before I was certain that I wanted to join and get posting privileges. I emphasize privilege because there has never been a doubt in my mind that that is exactly what it is- I don't have a right to post here. Even though I donate money on the Freepathons I am still under no illusions that I could be banned and if I were to be (banned) I'm pretty sure I would have nobody but myself to blame. Plenty of times I've been just about to post a nasty message and then just stopped and censored myself- sometimes just logging off and taking a time out for a couple hours before I respond. That's just the basic rules of civility.
One rule I try to use myself (loosely) in my everyday life is "If my mother or father would be ashamed to see me doing this or hear me saying this or if I would be ashamed for them to see me/hear me-- what I'm doing's probably not a good idea". Strictly speaking, there are plenty of instances that fall outside those guidelines but it's a pretty good rule of thumb to use in most situations.
I use a lot of these self made rules of thumb and they help me out. Like the issue of rights. On whether it's something I (or somebody) has a right to or not, I figure that if I could exercise this right, alone, on a deserted island off in the Pacific, it is indeed a right and not some privilege that I perceive as a right. For example, right to speech, religion, pursuit of happiness- all these things can be exercised on my desert island. Rights to medical care, cheap energy, a half hour slot on national TV, right to a job or a "living wage" or the right to post on an internet forum- these could not be "exercised" on my island and thus do not exist as rights. Now, obviously some of the rights I might take for granted on my island may not apply in polite society (open nudity, spending the daylight hours howling at the sun etc) but so far this rule of thumb has worked for me.
D'oh! Starting to ramble. Gotta go. Thanks for posting this.
My big question isn't this silly e-mail.
What I want to know is how this person got my e-mail address, because it was never published on the forum!
There's another thread going on now where it was just pointed out that only at most 100 out of millions of Muslims have tried to attack us here. I like to debate solutions but I don't like mindless "nuke them all" statements being liberally tossed into threads.
I believe this little phrase explains it all.
What's that? You say that you're an officer of an elite moose-spanking group? Or perhaps I'm merely thinking in Germlish.
Jim, You must feel like you're herding cats, sometimes.
Same here (although I occasionally lurk in them, strictly to observe the pathology). I'm already hip-deep in flamewars in Usenet - I use FR to take a break from them.
Hey Jim, can I have a ride in your black helicopter sometime? (snicker) Judging by the shrill and hysterical accusations of the tinfoil hat crowd banned by you and your yoeman staff, you must be doing something right. "You can judge a man by the quality of his enemies."
Keep it up.
Interesting how that also decribes the DU forum.
BTW, keep up the good work.
What's a Freeper to do?
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