Posted on 03/24/2023 1:50:12 PM PDT by Lazamataz
Some people hated him, he could be contentious.
But I didn't. I liked the guy. We got along famously when we met in person.
I haven't seen him around here for a while, so I looked at his latest posts. His last post was 1/21/2023.
I hope he's okay.
humblegunner, if you are ok, let me know in here or on Facebook.
I started lurking mid 90’s on recommendation of the great one, Rush Limbaugh! God rest his soul.
He may be a double for Zelensky.
I use https://wordcounter.net/ and since a 300 word excerpt is allowed from most sources then I usually work to provide excerpts of the excerpt (as well as expanding the title via brackets] so that the cursory reader (esp. those going thru the 250 article page) can at least quickly see if the article is worth pursing. And it is rather well-evidenced via comments that it is a FR "tradition" only to read the excerpt before commenting on it.
And if you read An exhortation to those who post thread (normally post as much of the meat of the article as allowed, describe videos, etc.) then you would see that it provides the link to Updated FR Excerpt and Link Only or Deny Posting List due to Copyright Complaints for more on this, which begins with "These sites must be excerpted and linked only [300 words or less, 1/2 the words or less for short articles]:"
I assume that since we here are taking other people’s work and using it for our discussions, the least we can do is encourage people to go and actually read the article which the original author put effort into publishing
Attribution is surely to be given, and the source normally linked, but excerpts of an excerpt can encourage people to go and actually read the article, like as the quality of a food can motivate people to the stated source, while extreme brevity may do little to whet the appetite.
And yet the many sites who monetize news of conservative interests to much that they plaque the reader with ads are actually fostering avoidance (up to 500 network requests from Gateway Pundit, vs. 3 for FR) and which monetization seems to be the goal behind much "blog pimping" of extreme brevity in posting leads. And if one is a Christian then what we provide in ministry should not prevent free sharing of such, with attribution.
All of which helps keep us from wasting time while helping FR be a better conservative new aggregator. Thanks for your help.
No.
No you didn't.
The forum started in 1998.
Poor woman. Glad she got rid of that loser.
(Yes, I know Humblegunner had lots of foes here, thanks for asking.)
Yep.
Free Republic has changed a lot over the past six years or so. When I first joined, there seemed to be a lot more comradery and not nearly as much contention and outright nastiness.
I’m one of the tamer posters, and if someone comes at me with antagonistic replies I simply ignore them. Post and ghost as they say. The way I look at it — I have my opinion, others have theirs. Some folks like Humblegunner seem to lean into the back and forth, many times going even further than I think he meant to.
Humblegunner might be banned, or might not be. He might have just gotten tired of the pervasive argumentative nasty behavior of some posters (maybe himself included) and moved on. I liked his posts. A little crazy can be fun. But overall, Free Republic isn’t nearly as much fun or informative as it used to be. I’ve been entertaining the idea of stepping back myself. I doubt I’ll be missed as much, but there’s a lot more to life than sitting at a PC arguing with strangers on the internet...
And what was that? I only ask because while I never paid much attention to her, I did get into it with her once since she lived on Detroit's east side in the Grosse Pointes, not far from me.
Do you remember when Neal Bortz started mentioning FR on the radio? That is where/when I heard of the site. Took me a while to make an account.
I went to Tallahassee. 2000 election.
Judge sander Saul.
Gore vs Bush.
Saw a freerepublic.com sign. Said to self “Remember that name”.
The rest is history
I could tolerate his blog thumping but for the most part, he was (is) vulgar and rude and probably single-handedly drove away countless potential Freepers. I don’t think I ever saw him add anything constructive to a thread.
Dang Dirty Mac!
I like the way You think!
Classy Green Eyed Blonde ended up being a dude. It irked a lot of the old-timers here because many of us flirted with “her”, only to find the truth out later in rather embarrassing fashion.
I was one of the very first accounts due to having been invited when it was still in beta mode. I knew founder Jim Robinson from the Prodigy days when we posted together, mostly in the Whitewater BB section. I remember typing out entire articles by hand to post there, such as John Crudele articles from the NY Post. This was before most newspapers even had an online presence so we were not able to "cut and paste" like today.
Prodigy put in a new policy prohibiting the posting of newspaper articles as they were concerned about copyright violations. Hence Free Republic was born, where we could post all the articles we wanted. However, just a few years later, Free Republic got hit with lawsuits and had to begin excerpting articles from most major publications as part of the settlement.
Anyway, my first account was under my real name and I decided later that year (December 1997) to open a new account under the moniker "SamAdams76" and have the account under my real name deleted.
I remember you from back then.
Thanks for that info on the early days of FR. Quite interesting.
I went to a dubya rally in Grand Rapids and got a great seat in the front on the side. Snuck in a www.freerepublic.com sign and held it up, most of the rally. No one hassled me. I lurked for a year at thd beginning and then signed up Feb. 1999.
Wow, I did not know that. Thanks
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