Email: The Future of Free Republic

Email | 06/25/02 | Jim Robinson

[Jim Robinson]

The following email is being circulated to our members by various disgruntled former FReepers:

Subject: The Future of Our Free Republic

Dear 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

[Senator Pardek]

I love people with a good semse of humor.

That would be Pardek #6.

[Poohbah]

No, it's the property of Jim Robinson, and he's satisfied with the performance of the moderators, while you aren't. I'm merely recommending a solution to the problem you perceive.

[Brasil]

I read the silly e-mail and your rational response. You reported, I decided. You're right, they're wrong. Let them stiff each other on their own forum. Keep FR elegantly uncluttered.

[Willie Green]

"...the Spooks & Gubm't apologist...
...swarm, en-masse, on the threads..."

Well, I'm shattered ... not even an honorable mention as a "government shill" or anything.
I thought I could have been somebody ... I could have been a contenduh!

Hehehehe....
Gotta admit, they do have a pretty good grasp of the "big-government-can-do-no-wrong" All-Stars.
No need to feel slighted, it gets pretty tough for more normal people to be admitted to that Hall of Fame.

OTOH, it is rather sad that these disgruntled malcontents have allowed their personal paranoia to skew their perspective and priorities. Taking potshots at JimRob and FR is a pretty childish approach to relieving their angst. There a far more important issues for adults to discuss.

[Ratatoskr]

No, it's the property of Jim Robinson, and he's satisfied with the performance of the moderators, while you aren't.

Yes, as he has been satisfied in the past with the performance of many who are now long gone. With prejudice.

Wait long enough by the river and the body of your enemy will float by.

[hellinahandcart]

Don't hold your breath, I'm still waiting for her to post those damning pictures of flaming tennis shoes in Jenin (don't ask for a link, the thread got pulled).

[Ratatoskr]

Don't hold your breath, I'm still waiting for her to post those damning pictures of flaming tennis shoes in Jenin (don't ask for a link, the thread got pulled).

How many more shoes must die to convince the sceptical?

[colorado tanker]

My feeling is that those kinds of posts just expose those people for what they are. I understand the logic, however, of deleting those posts. This being the premier conservative forum on the Web, those kinds of posts can be used for propaganda by the lefties.

I've not had a post deleted, but one post to me was. It was vicious anti-Semitic and anti-Christian screed. The scary thing was that several people with posting privileges vehemently protested the ban, because they agreed with the poster.

Jim, you provide a great service. I'm sure this is the thankless part of the job.

[NormsRevenge]

Those who get booted are usually posters who post racist materials, posters who post anti-Semitic materials, posters who post Holocaust denial materials, those who spread the "Protocols" nonsense propaganda, those who post Marxist propaganda and attempt to pass it off as truth, those who deal in tinfoil hat conspiracy theory, those who condemn others based on race or religion, those who condemn religion itself, those leftists who pose as conservatives or right wingers but constantly trash conservatives or conservative policy, those who call for armed revolution or other violence, those who blame America for 9-11, those who excessively bash our president, our war effort or our military, those who post excessive profanity, those who agressively engage in personal attacks, feuds and flamewars, those who register two or more accounts and use them as straw men or try to pass themselves off as different posters, those who post vulgarity or pornography, those who continually post off topic items, spammers, advertisers, trolls, liberals, anarchists, skinheads, nazis, communists, defenders of abortion, gun control, gay rights, peta people, etc, etc
(Free Republic is not a liberal debating society).

I wonder what it must be like having a family with thousands sometimes. They say ya have to take the good with the bad. One man's insult is another man's platitude.

I don't miss the flames or the diatribes extolling socialism and marxism. This IS not public domain, rather a community that has a right to exist peacefully with reasonable folks.

To Jim and John and All OF U FreePers Keepin' The Ship Moving - Keep Up the Fine Work!

For me, Its all about Freedom and Politics with some Humour miXed in.
DUMP DAVI$ & the Den of Socialists



GO SIMON

[beowolf]

When I am out walking and see a pile of dog crap on the sidewalk I do not call for help, I step over it.

Herein lies the rub...some people view the mere existence of the pile of dog crap an affront to the order of the world as they imagine it should exist. Hence, they immediately want someone to pick it up. I would imagine that, they actually wiggle with glee at the idea of being able to ring the abuse button to summon the servants to clean up the mess. "Remove it from my sight!!"...and their world is once again perfect...in their own minds...until they take their next walk.

[tophat9000]

In addition, people who were banned from FR for the above reasons but come back with a new account will usually get booted when detected and all of his posts removed regardless of what he posted or whether he broke any rules under his new nom de plume

I had not realized the above before and explains a lot

To be honest in the past had felt the moderator was pulling the trigger way too fast on some innoxiously post and posters … and was left wondering “what the hell did they do?” but didn’t even think of a past posts or concurrent alt posts under a different screen names

Let that be a lesson boys & girls: ....“All your IP address belong to us”

[hellinahandcart]

I take it you remember that thread too. :D

[Neets]

You STILL don't get it Dales.....THERE ARE FRillions of them here...can't you see them all posting and defending themselves for putting out this letter..and stepping up to the plate now that it's out in the open???

FRillions.

[NMC EXP]

Herein lies the rub...some people view the mere existence of the pile of dog crap an affront to the order of the world as they imagine it should exist. Hence, they immediately want someone to pick it up.

---

It seems there are a couple of good metaphors in there....

Regards

J.R.

[Phil V.]

Was he stating a belief of his own, or mocking those he thinks feel that way?

Upon further investigation I have to conclude that the poster was being sarcastic. Still, the sarcasm behind his "abominable comment" was founded on real abominable comments written in earnest by others he seemingly detests. His sarcasm rests, sadly, on permissible FR PC speech.

[wardaddy]

I don't give a hoot or a haller one way or the other about Republicans, but I hate the freedom robbing, baby killing, gun grabbing, socialist pig dogs in the Democrat Party with a burning passion and I want to kick them out of their offices

That about sums up the feelings of most of us. Plus for me personally you nailed 2 of the 3 elements of my own ideological holy trinity..fighting against..baby killing and gun grabbing

Nice work!

[Timesink]

Liberty Forum has a low volume of traffic with a few posters (15 or so) making most of the posts. Anti Jewish and anti Israel posters there express themselves pretty much any which way they want.

They also suffer from a technical problem - one they share with DU - that ensures they could never become a serious threat to FR even if they did start getting any posters. That problem is that their software generates web pages by creating ever-more-nested <TABLE>s for every new comment posted to a thread. This isn't a big deal for a thread that has four or five comments on it, but if it becomes popular and starts getting dozens of responses, so many tables end up getting created that it overloads most web browsers except on the most state-of-the-art, 2-GHz Pentium 4s. I open a long thread on DU and it sometimes takes as long as EIGHT MINUTES before the browser finishes rendering the page. Such "features" guarantee their forums will never have heavy participation levels, no matter what. Plenty of usability studies have shown that the average user will not wait more than seven seconds for at least some readable material to show up on-screen. If it doesn't, they move on to another site.

Making FR's threads table-free is probably the single smartest move JohnRob ever made when it comes to contributing to the success of FR. (Second was cutting threads into 50-post chunks for similar browser-overload reasons.)

[Dales]

If there were such a "campaign",

There is no need for the word if there.

The fact that there is such a campaign is without doubt.

is this how you would go about calming it down?

By pointing out that it is being instigated, and pointing out who is doing the instigation?

You bet.

I think Jim did the right thing here.