Why is there such disdain here for “newbies”, and the admonishment that they must wait a while before posting? Just because people have not been “FReepers” forever does not mean they are ignorant of politics or other topics.
They may be extremely more knowledgable than many of us, and may have posted on other sites for years! It’s just that they are new to THIS exact site.
Many existing FReepers (but not the site’s owners) are very snobbish in this respect, and I don’t know of another site that discourages short-term posters in this manner.
Trust but verify.
There is a high ratio of liberal trolls to genuine new members, so everyone is suspect at first. It has nothing to do with being snobbish.
I disagree. Looking around a lot of the other typical forum engines on the web, they all display things like post counts and sign up dates right along with the user names. Even more, some sites integrate the voting of comments right into the threads. And these aren't necessarily political in nature. Woot.com, for example, contains a thing called "Quality Post" count that is awarded only at the behest of the site moderators.
Oh my Gawd!!!!!!
I agree with you 100%....when I was a newbie it really hacked me off when some one who was losing the discussion would drop down to the level of calling me a newbie.