Free Republic still has one of the best forum designs, in my opinion. It's simple and easy to read, unlike the Reddit design, which theDonald copied, in which the top post gets most of the replies and goes quickly off the rail on some irrelevant tangent.
The other thing FR does better is that threads are ranked according to actual popularity, rather than being lucky enough to get stickied by a mod.
That said, the mods at FR are biased against sources they don't like. I quit ten years ago, when my Alex Jones links kept getting deleted.
I've been at FR since like 2002, and over time, some of the best FReepers have died, and seem to have been replaced with concern trolls. Before the advent of autists, FR was the place for internet/RL detectives.
I wish that were true. If it were, Free Republic would still be prominent.
Free Republic still has one of the best forum designs, in my opinion. It's simple and easy to read, unlike the Reddit design, which theDonald copied, in which the top post gets most of the replies and goes quickly off the rail on some irrelevant tangent.
The other thing FR does better is that threads are ranked according to actual popularity, rather than being lucky enough to get stickied by a mod. That said, the mods at FR are biased against sources they don't like. I quit ten years ago, when my Alex Jones links kept getting deleted.
I've been at FR since like 2002, and over time, some of the best FReepers have died, and seem to have been replaced with concern trolls. Before the advent of autists, FR was the place for internet/RL detectives.
Yes, the most famous being Buckhead's seminal post about typefonts in Dan Rather's report on G W Bush's military service.
FR was a force to be reckoned with in the late 90's and early 00's.