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
Simple: FR is successful, and they're not. FR averages 2,500-3,300 unique posters per DAY (and that's POSTERS ... the number of lurkers is far higher). They average 10-15. FR is the gold standard by which online political communities, of any party or ideology, are judged. And no other forum has ever even come close.
And so the sub-forum he created to allow those interested in that topic and how it relates to politics is what?
I had always had the impression that the stated constitutional restoration and anti-corruption goals of the site were pretty self explanitory and that Jim just wanted religious debate kept to a minimum because it was so devisive and detracted attention from the site goals....
It turned out to appear that he was suprised with how central religion was to many Freepers and to achieve the same thing made a niche in his forum rather than running people off who didn't understand what he was trying to do...seems pretty tolerant to me, but hey, I'm not vested in much of this debate on FR being "my" forum.
Bwhahahahhahahahaaa.! No, really!
Mom always told me if you can't say something nice, don't say anything....in this instance, I agree....as it regards the other 3. :)
Oooohhh... the crowd really digs it when you do the macho thing Jim.
That is one of the most bizzare phrases I've ever seen. Under what circumstances were Jews in the 40's in a position to accept excuses from the nazis?
Are you accessing FR through the URL "www.freerepublic.com", or just "freerepublic.com"? If it's the latter, that's your problem. Only "www.freerepublic.com" recognizes the cookie that allows you to stay permanently logged in. If you come in through "freerepublic.com", you'll have to re-login constantly.
This happened to me once, and it took me a month and a half to figure it out! *grin*
I registered there and posted some for just that reason.
Yep, and I like the sub-forum format. All FReepers have to do is change their personal preferences so that the category of posts they are most interested in show up right after they log in. Pretty convenient, IMO.
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