I ran a computer bulletin board system many years ago, and one of my guiding principles was a desire never to censor discussions. The result of that was that most of the system became a gigantic flamewar, and many of my most interesting participants left. I tried a whole bunch of solutions to this problem, but none of them worked out all that well.
You may have to have the experience of running an online forum to know how difficult it is. I know that if I ran Free Republic, I would probably offer a somewhat less controlled environment. At the same time, there is a huge constituency of people who love things as JimRob has them, and I don't think second-guessing him would be very productive.
I don't think hostility to other groups or opinions is exclusive to liberalism; I'm sure there are plenty of conservatives who do likewise. But I think they would do so with a lot more class and style than these folks did. Letting in a lot of people who would try and destroy this system is no answer to the problems that we face.
Hope that helps. In any event, I'm glad you enjoyed my video!
D
15-20 years ago they were reasonably coherent and while flamewars did occur, the posters would generally be added to people's killfile (so they would not read the offending posts).
Moderated groups can be created to control the traffic that is posted.
Much of the internet world has bypassed/ignored USENET.
I appreciate FR for what it has to offer. I'm actually surprised when some lib posters aren't banned for some of their posts.