Replies

Maybe instead of a set number of designated bloggers, a central blog-thread in which the best of FR is pulled from the daily pages and added to the blog-thread.

Who does the adding? Admin, of course.

And where do they get their input? From us. We nominate specific posts --- or series of posts --- to get added to the central blog.

This will tend to encourage longer and more thoughtful pieces being written (since many will want their post nominated for inclusion). At the same time, it might be worth noting that some of the best of FR is not in the longer paragraphs but often in the shorter stuff, especially a series of shorts in which members "get on a roll" and really hammer out a humorous response to an idea.

So what might make it into the blog sometimes is not just single well-written pieces, but some of the more delightfully witty chains of irreverant humor that are so common here.

One problem in this idea is the amount of work in culling the nominations. Each day there will be a lot of nominations. Maybe add a new button and maybe allow each freeper (or each long-time, multi-posted freeper) to use the button only once a day, after which it disappears from his/her screen until tomorrow.

Anyway, just rambling here.

I like the idea of a central thread (or maybe more than one) because one of the problems here is the fragmentation. There's just too much stuff to read, too many places to go, with stuff scattered too far and wide.

So however it's done, I'm for the idea.

I like your idea.

Free Republic is big. I know politicos troll here to get a sense of how conservatives are thinking about the issues. The Washington Post recently referred to FR in an article in their paper as "a super-site", so we're definitely getting noticed.

Next, there's a lot of talent on FR. There's a lot of conservative voices here that (in my opinion) deserve to be heard just as much as any high flier who's drawing a salary for ranting on editorial sheets across the nation.

If such a daily "best of" thread were created, I imagine people would start coming to FR just to read that the same as they would the editorial section of their favorite newspaper. I also imagine lurkers with a purpose (pundits, politicians and others looking for ideas or feedback) would start perusing that page daily as well.

Something like that could get to be a pretty big thing. After a while, you might even have the liberal columnists reading that section to see if they touched a nerve with their latest offering. There are so many possibilities for something like that...

The voting is the tricky bit. It could quickly get out of hand if you could vote on multiple comments but then again, I'd hate to have to pass over someone who had great comments because I shot my wad earlier in the day on somebody else's equally great comments.

I'd like to see this idea expanded. FR could become the "Go To" site for the best conservative commentary- the establishment could see themselves eclipsed. I like it.