Here’s everything you need to know, straight from the owner’s mouth -
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/2636843/posts?page=552#552
Jim has several times since then restated and reinforced that position. I don’t think anything more needs to be said.
Seems Jim is aware of the pro and cons. Don't want volumes of blog spam, yet having alternatives to the dominant propaganda media is desirable too.
I've seen some blanket criticisms of blogs by a few posters here that makes me cringe.
“...Jim has several times since then restated and reinforced that position...”
And I think that is short sighted.
What content does FR produce? I don’t see much original content authored solely on FR. Quite the contrary, the vast majority are discussions about content from other sources. Jim doesn’t have to search the web daily to post interesting content to his site because his model uses the subscribers to do that work for him.
Understand, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that. My question is: Without “foreign” content (full or excerpted posts) from other sources fueling the vast majority of discussion activity on FR — would FR have the same level of discussion activity? I rather doubt it.
You’d think he would not want to discourage topic-appropriate activity, excerpted or otherwise.