JimRob & John Robinson - GET YOUR ACT TOGETHER - or the Nut Roots will take down Free Republic

[KayEyeDoubleDee]

This is what the Nut Roots are doing to WGN-AM in Chicago:

Obama vs. WGN-AM
The station is coming under attack for offering airtime to controversial author.
by John McCormick and Steven Schmadeke | Tribune staff reporters
September 16, 2008
chicagotribune.com

Chicago radio station WGN-AM is again coming under attack from the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama for offering airtime to a controversial author. It is the second time in recent weeks the station has been the target of an "Obama Action Wire" alert to supporters of the Illinois Democrat.

Monday night's target was David Freddoso, who the campaign said was scheduled to be on the station from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. Chicago time.

Excerted

Obama mobilizes rapid response on Web
Campaign targets media when attacks aired By John McCormick | Chicago Tribune reporter
12:32 AM CDT, September 17, 2008
chicagotribune.com

Much of Barack Obama's political success can be traced to a database listing contact information for millions of people, a tool that has proved invaluable in raising record sums of money and organizing a national volunteer network.

Now Obama's presidential campaign is increasingly using the list to beat back media messages it does not like, calling on supporters to flood radio and television stations when those opposed to him run anti-Obama ads or appear on talk shows.

It did so as recently as Monday night, when it orchestrated a massive stream of complaints on the phone lines of Tribune Co.-owned WGN-AM in Chicago when the radio station hosted author David Freddoso, who has written a controversial book about the Illinois Democrat.

chicagotribune.com

If you guys in the Robinson family don't get your act together, and get it together soon, then the Nut Roots are going to take down this site, and take it down hard, for the next two months.

You need to do several things to the Free Republic infrastructure and have them in place no later than about October 1; among them:

1) Mirror Free Republic to at least two other physical locations around the country - one on the east coast [Washington/NYC/Atlanta], and the other maybe more central [Texas has some large colo's with backbone connectivity].

Right now, I am seeing only two IP resolutions for "www.freerepublic.com" - 209.147.64.200 & 209.147.64.201 - and traceroutes have them [predictably] on the same physical network [I imagine that they are sitting right next to one another in the same server rack]:

[n - 2] mg-1.a01.mlpsca01.us.da.verio.net
[n - 1] 128.242.105.82
[n]     209.147.64.200

2) Turn off as much of the relational structure at Free Republic as is possible, and return to a strictly flat file structure for as much of the content at Free Republic as is possible.

The current relational structure is hopelessly broken, and the negotiations between the caching frontend and the relational backend are breaking down multiple times a day.

Again: THE RELATION STRUCTURE MUST BE DISCARDED - THIS IS IMPERATIVE.

[Furthermore, it is vastly easier to propagate a flat file structure to multiple physical sites around the country; trying to propagate a relational structure, in real time, with relatively limited funds for bandwidth, is essentially impossible.]

3) As things really heat up in October & November, I'd consider banning [temporarily] all non-political content, and instituting an aggressive policy of putting on probation the accounts of users who post lengthy, inane, unfocused, meandering, off-topic soliloquies - concentrating instead on promoting the work of people [like Kristinn] who are doing original investigative reporting and who are presenting their results in simple, straightforward, declarative arguments.

Along those lines, I'd move aggressively to upgrade the quality of the moderators who are policing the content at Free Republic - the quality of the moderation is utterly unpredictable from hour to hour - one hour there will seem to be a moderator who "gets it", and the next hour, it's as if that moderator's shift suddenly ended, and we have an utterly clueless moderator in charge of things.

I don't care if you're worried about hurting Granny's feelings if you tell her that she can't moderate for the next two months - we have to get some moderators in here who are up-to-date on current events and who understand the difference between original investigative reporting [regarding e.g. DEM/Obama treason & Bolshevik/Gramscian subterfuge] and the kinds of "Pray for my Kitty who is having feline leukemia chemotherapy tomorrow morning" threads which seem to waste so much CPU time & bandwidth at this site.

[UCANSEE2]

“Moderating a large board like this can’t be easy in any stretch of the imagination.”

From what I can tell, it’s more like beating yourself in the head with a 2x4 all day long. Lot’s of headaches.

[potlatch]

First of all, I didn’t make any of the remarks you have above your line.

Secondly, I suggested a freeze for a few weeks because of the slowness and trouble we have had. Tonight is a whole new day of posting fast and having the pager stay on.

There were quite a few getting tired of the slowness and going to other sites so we were losing the words of good freepers. If someone had wanted to be in this fight they would have signed up a long time ago.

It was a mild suggestion for a problem, not an earth shattering wish. If the whole site crashed and burned then none of us would be here.

I’m off to bed now.

[UCANSEE2]

That’s OK. I didn’t bookmark it until your post, because I wasn’t doing that ‘thinking’ thing again when someone first notified me.

So, glad you did provide the link.

: )

[UCANSEE2]

I was addressing both of you, and all readers in general.

I know we have had some slowness and last night I couldn’t even get to FR for hours and hours (I thought I was gonna die!)

But, on several threads I read that the staff was installing some new servers, to help with the upcoming load.

Might that be the reason for the downtime and problems, rather than some silly noobs?

---

And, you don’t have to answer. (tonite, anyway) I need to hit the sack myself.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Ping.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

I’ll ask this here:
Is it possible to put up a link at the top of the ‘Latest Posts” thread
(http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/*/index?tab=comments)
referencing the thread or page with all of the copyright info?

As many times as I have saved it and bookmarked it, I always end up having to look (and look and look) for it.
(NOT blaming you, only my organizational issues)

[Marysecretary]

I’ve had problems posting replies, etc. from Yahoo. I don’t seem to have so much trouble on my server, verizon, as I do on Yahoo.

[LakeLady]

I’ve been trying to make a donation through the Support FR link on the home page but can’t get through. Is it just because so many are making donations (I hope) or is there a problem with the link. I’ve not had any other page errors the last 2 days.
Thanks.

[potlatch]

[But, on several threads I read that the staff was installing some new servers, to help with the upcoming load.
Might that be the reason for the downtime and problems, rather than some silly noobs?]

Of course!! We all knew the new servers were to be installed before the election, have talked of it numerous times. But meanwhile it was excruciating and newbies were joining like mad, adding to the load.

I spent much time going to Yahoo Free Republic to read.

[Jim Robinson]

Sorry about that. That system has been down since our crash the other day. John now has our three new servers physically installed at the data center and is in the process of working them into our system. He’ll be bringing the secure server and other broken systems back online as he finishes up bringing the new servers up to speed.

Thanks,

Jim

[LakeLady]

Thank you, sir. I will keep trying. I appreciate you.

[Quix]

From what I can tell, it’s more like beating yourself in the head with a 2x4 all day long. Lot’s of headaches.

==

An apt description I’d bet.

[NewLand]

consider banning [temporarily] all non-political content

Good opportunity to get all the evolution threads into a trash bin somewhere... :)

[Danae]

Uhhhhh yea.
ping

[Tirian]

As per my Freepmail, is FR hacked? I cannot log into FR by the normal link (times out). Can only access via the back doors I found on a cached copy of a FR post on site security listed on Yahoo:

http://beta.freerepublic.com/ = http://209.157.64.204/

http://www.freerepublic.com/ = http://209.157.64.200/

Bookmark the direct IP addresses if the DNS listing gets hacked.