regarding comments 7 and 8. I’m just a novice, and I don’t even take posting all that seriously, by why censor? I’d like to know what they said. if it was disgusting, then I know how to measure their subsequent posts. am I such a child I need to be protected?
Just a thought - Maybe its not about you. Maybe its about having a forum with certain standards of decorum. Whether its to protect the reputation of FR to the outside media or to prevent disgusting, repulsive and vulgar content from women and children that maybe be members or lurkers.
In one instance of which I’m aware, someone posted a “reply” which was an obscene photograph. This raises the general point that an anonymous posting board like this would degenerate very quickly into the scrawlings on a men’s room toilet stall if there were no moderators to tamp that sort of thing down.The most general point is that although FreeRepublic.com is threads started by registered members posting articles, and those threads are replies by other registered members, it is that only because the moderators - by their “censorship” - cause it to remain so. Without the moderators, it would become something else.
Every publication is targeted to an audience. the particular things that get deleted by the moderators leave the rest - the visible FR that you actually see - as the product of the posting membership as it is shaped by the ownership of the forum. Jim Robinson exercises his constitutional right to freedom of the press by establishing this forum.
You and I have choices as we exercise our freedom of the press. We can either limit ourselves to expressions of opinion which Jim’s moderators will allow to stand, because we want an audience and we respect the particular audience for which this forum is edited. Or, if we want to exert more freedom of expression than the mods allow us, we can go out into the cold, cruel world and try to attract an audience to a web site which we own and control to suit our intended audience. I have no interest in attempting that, but you can if you wanna.
1. It’s not about you.
2. See number 1.