Freerepublic

THE "Q" thread on FR IS a great place to scan the news. The place has lots of experts in most disciplines posting routinely--including their views on daily news items, politics etc.

The whole place used to be a robust venue to discuss issues of the day with mutual respect etc.

Alas, the curmudgeon owning it evidently polluted the mods & the site with too much prissy, rigid, narrow crap that ran off--even banned--many of the better, brighter posters--who were still quite conservative but not quite "orthodox" enough on some tiny narrow issue for the powers that be.

I really like the software--the multiple navigation buttons are a great feature. I know many consider the software klunky & old fashioned but I love it.

I just hate the very narrow rigidity. I tried to provoke the owner to stop banning people who were donating $5,000/quarter or month--for very shallow, silly reasons.

IIRC, during the Bush days, Bush was initially verbotten. Then it was verbotten to not support Bush. And if one didn't successfully navigate the whip-lash changes well or fast enough, one got banned. THAT WAS TERMINALLY STUPID AND ARROGANT.

And too much of that mentality can still surface far too often.

Nevertheless, the posters are GENERALLY A WONDERFUL GROUP OF CONSERVATIVES who care about God, the USA etc. very passionately & mutually supportively.

--Quix

This review is about the moderators of Free Republic, not the majority of posters themselves. There are many, many intelligent posters on Free Republic.

I had been a member of Free Republic for almost 10 years. Then, a couple of weeks ago, I suddenly got kicked off. This was the reason given by the moderator: "troll." Completely ridiculous. Over the nearly 10 years I was on there, I had made hundreds of posts. I had never once even received a warning, much less a ban. Anyway, I was not allowed to appeal this recent verdict or defend myself either.

Apparently the reason I got kicked off was for suggesting that Trump may have had a consensual encounter with E. Jean Carroll. I like Trump overall, but I suspect that something did happen between them.

Anyway, isn't that ridiculous? I don't know what the moderators there are smoking, but frankly, I don't care. Apparently, now if you express any opinion that the moderators don't agree with, you're history. It didn't use to be like this. So much for diversity of opinions, huh? This is just a warning for any conservative who wants to join that Web site--don't. Please go elsewhere instead.