Free Republic

Total paid during tax year 2005-$36,142,506(income tax withheld, quarterly payments, extension filing payment etc).

And thanks to Obama, he got the $36,142,506 back in 2010...

Global warming “models” can predict the climate in 100 years and is considered settled science.... But hurricane “models” show vastly different scenarios only four or five days out....

You can bet on the outcome of a football game. But it is generally impossible to predict what will happen exactly in the seventh minute - until you are at 6'55" :-)

"The European model comes from a private consortium whose sole interest is forecasting the weather. The American and Canadian models are infected with some of the same crappy science as the global warming models (which are much coarser and more heavily parameterized)."

I don't think so: From their web-site:

The European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) is an independent intergovernmental organisation supported by 34 states.

ECMWF is both a research institute and a 24/7 operational service, producing and disseminating numerical weather predictions to its Member States. This data is fully available to the national meteorological services in the Member States. The Centre also offers a catalogue of forecast data that can be purchased by businesses worldwide and other commercial customers. The supercomputer facility (and associated data archive) at ECMWF is one of the largest of its type in Europe and Member States can use 25% of its capacity for their own purposes.

The organisation was established in 1975 and now employs around 280 staff from more than 30 countries. ECMWF is one of the six members of the Co-ordinated Organisations, which also include the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), the Council of Europe (CoE), the European Space Agency (ESA), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites (EUMETSAT). ECMWF is based in Reading, UK.

"OK, we won’t use the term ‘Allah’...we’ll use, ‘pagan moon god of the mooselimb cult”."

I'm afraid you are missing the point: by forbidding Christians to use the word "Allah" for the One God in print, they are forced to use the arabic equivalent of pagan moon god of the mooselimb cult” when writing about Jesus Christ.

The evil intention is obvious.

Until the US declared independence, we were required by the King of England to embrace slavery.

The history of Georgia is a counterexample to this claim: See Thurmond: Why Georgia'a founder fought slavery

• The trustees of the colony of Georgia passed a law to prohibit slavery in 1735
• in 1750, Georgia's anti-slavery era officially ended when the trustees voted to repeal the slavery ban.

The repeal was not the result of a fiat by the English King, but of the lobbying of pro-slavery colonists.

Tell me, are you the whiner that started truebluerino?

No. And I don't think that it will work. FR is more than just another web forum - and something which doesn't even allow for pinging will never be a substitute for FR.

Thanks for the info!

And though I'm not a big FR user - but just a regular reader - I take an interest in the site.

When I started the thread Who reads FR?, I chose the title as it is the header of a section on the home page of FR:

Who reads FR?
Over 300,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic since inception in 1996 and our forum is read daily by over one hundred thousand freedom loving citizens and patriots from all around the country, and all around the world. We're currently delivering over thirty million pageviews per month to over one million visitors.

This section wasn't changed since the first week of Dec 2008, when the number of users went up from 200,000 to 300,000 and the number of pageviews and visitors was introduced for the first time.

I have no doubt that you thought at this time that the number of people who have registered for posting privileges was correct then, as the user ID #300,000 was already taken in May 2008, though less than 230,000 user names were registered in Dec 2008.

And I have no doubt that the statement We're currently delivering over thirty million pageviews per month to over one million visitors was correct at the time. But is it still correct today? Are you currently delivering that many pageviews and greet that many visitors? Have a look at the monthly edits here at FR:
The numbers are impressive and reflect the contributions of a strong community. Nevertheless, the months prior to Dec 2008 were exceptional - Oct 2008 is the strongest month since 2005. That's not much of a surprise because of the presidential elections in this year.
As one may assume that the number of pageviews and of visitors is somewhat proportional to the number of edits, the currently current figures should have dropped considerably from the time two years ago.

So, why not give the current information - or drop the lines, as they are at best of historic interest, at worst misleading.

Do you really think anything's changed?

It's another thread with the same theme - and the number of my comments went up. So, not much really.

How many days in a row do you think you can beat a dead horse before it really starts to stink?

Well, as the horse was revived by this thread, I thought another day would be okay :-)

FR is a stable web community - it is even older than wikipedia, and it is still going strong. As with wikipedia, unlimited growth can't be expected, to exist for such a long time is a success on itself. Wikipedia defines its active registered users as those who have performed an action in the last 30 days. Currently, the number is ~130,000. When looking up the edits at December 2010, one can find that the number of freepers editing FR over such a period of time is ~10,000. I think that for an online community, this is an impressive number.

First of all, who reads FR and how many accounts do we have? I honestly have no idea and the exact number does not concern me. We currently have over 369,000 registered accounts on FR, but as someone pointed out yesterday, not all of them are active and I have no idea how many are active.

I suppose, I'm the one who pointed this out yesterday. I don't know whether active account is the right phrase. What makes a registered account? I would say at least an account name. But of these 369,000 account IDs, only 269,000 are assigned a name - so, for me this seems to be the number of registered accounts. And of course - as with wikipedia - you will find under the 269,000 registered accounts thousands which obviously haven't been able to edit FR at all - just have a look at the accounts #346,146 to #348,153, most of them having the word "webcam" in it... So, even when you are not concerned with the exact number, it would be nice to get the number right to one significant digit - at least on the main page of FR.

We serve over 1,000,000 pageviews per day.

The number of pageviews is certainly more significant than the number of accounts. And again, that is the number which is displayed on the main page of FR:
We're currently delivering over thirty million pageviews per month to over one million visitors.
This number was put there in the first week of Dec 2008, and was never changed. That's quite a time for a current figure. Especially, as the months before, the months which most probably were used to calculate it, included the election of Nov 4, 2008 - and were at least in regard of the number of daily edits and posted threads by far the busiest of the last two years.

"You can't see the forest for the trees"

I have to admit that I see neither the forest nor the trees, but only the sign in front of them, stating:

Over 300,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic since inception in 1996 and our forum is read daily by over one hundred thousand freedom loving citizens and patriots from all around the country, and all around the world. We're currently delivering over thirty million pageviews per month to over one million visitors.
Oh, we're big stuff all right

I just want the numbers on the main page of FR to be correct.

Page views gives all the info anyone would need.

Alas, the page views displayed at the main page as being currently delivered were added in early December 2008. So, they were retrieved during the months before, covering the presidential election (Nov 4, 2008). The actual current numbers (Nov 2010, Dec 2010) are most probably considerably lower, judging from the edits made during these periods, by perhaps 20% - 25%.

But that is something which the administrator of the servers could easily check...

Soooo, complaining about stupid stuff IS your hobby?

I wouldn't phrase it like that - that just seems to be a consequence :-)

I'm taking an interest in the question how to measure the success of an online community (not only as a hobby...)

Obviously, there are many different bench-marks, and FR chose four of those to display on the main page to exemplify that we're big stuff all right :

1. Over 300,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic since inception in 1996
2. our forum is read daily by over one hundred thousand freedom loving citizens and patriots from all around the country, and all around the world
3. We're currently delivering over thirty million pageviews per month...
4. ...to over one million visitors.

Since I became member of FR in 2007, the numbers have been updated only once, so I got curious. In fact, the current display is there since Dec 2008, when the number of page-views and visitors were introduced for the first time.

I can't say much about the last three points: the administrators of the servers should have no problem to look them up. As 2008 was the year of a presidential election, one would assume that the numbers were exceptionally high, though.

What I can do is a little bit of data-mining. And this lead to the conclusion of the blog-entry, i.e., that the number of users seems not to be right - neither in 2008 nor today. Hope that helped.

You are the ONLY one who cares about things that signify nothing. GET A HOBBY!

*LOL* Occupying yourself with something of little significance - isn't that the very definition of a hobby?

Your insistence that JohnRob drop everything to satisfy your obsession with the number of registered screen names would be like asking General Washington to order his men to stop fighting and count their bullets.

I don't think so: I just wanted him to perform a small query. It's more like asking for an uncontroversial version of a birth certificate after you have been presented with a first version which seemed to display somewhat inaccurate numbers...

It’s more like: Bartender, you are advertising British pints, but you are handing out American pints. Do you think that this is close enough?

Sorry, what was the question again?

Well, that’s all well and good, but I repeat, who cares?

Obviously, I do - and I thought you should...

The inactive accounts are people who registered screen names but never activated their accounts. Don’t know if he still does it or not, but John used to purge the unactivated accounts after a month or so.

Indeed? Then he hasn't purged anything since Feb 2010, and/or the registration process has changed. OTOH, these purges have been quite selective, as thousands of obvious automatically generated spam accounts haven't been erased (have a look at all the accounts with "webcam" in the name), even before Feb 2010 (the month of the last purge).

We still have somewhere in the general neighborhood of 300,000 registered screen names.

If we are taking the same criterion as in Dec 2008 when the number was changed to 300,000 (i.e. ID numbers assigned), we have way surpassed the general neighborhood of 300,000 registered screen names. There are more than 370,000 ID numbers assigned. But at least 100,000 don't match editors who have completed the activation process. And I suppose that your technical team is well aware of this fact - at least since Feb 2010.

But of course, these are not the important figures. It was rightly stated that the number of page views and the number of unique visitors are quite more meaningful. And I don't doubt these numbers. But shouldn't we try to get every number on the main page right?

The issue remains.. why is this number so important to you?

The number is important enough to be featured on the main page of freerepublic.com - shouldn't it be correct?