Talk:Free Republic

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Attacks on Obama family

This section seems to be unnecessary and not notable. It concerns a single thread on a site that has thousands of them. One effect of it, intended or not, is to demean the subject of the article. Unless there is some reasoned opposition, I intend to delete it. --Lou Sander (talk) 13:45, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The incident received media coverage and can be kept in the article. — goethean ॐ 14:17, 7 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

And why should it be kept? And if it is kept, why shouldn't the material from the posts be included? --Lou Sander (talk) 04:51, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Any material which was covered by the media (in this case, the Sun article) can be included in the article. — goethean ॐ 14:32, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The quotations in the Vancouver Sun give a taste of the tone (excuse the mixed metaphor) of the discussions on the website which is the subject of the article. I think that the article should include more quotations from the thread which were covered by the news article. The quotations give insight regarding the subculture which the website cultivates --- an angry, racist, irrational group. — goethean ॐ 14:51, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with goethean that the material now in the article should remain. The site has thousands of threads but very few of them attract coverage in other media. This is an opportunity for us to give our readers information about the site by reporting the observations of a third party.

On the other hand, the coverage doesn't need to be extremely detailed. We now have one quotation from the Free Republic thread. I'm skeptical about whether additional quotations would add much; I suggest that proposed language be posted her for discussion. JamesMLane t c 15:03, 8 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Concur. --BenBurch (talk) 22:16, 20 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Cheap shot

"One thing that apparently won't result in a ban: using the site solely to boost Web ranking for your child porn site." Quite an accusation, given that an actual child porn site would be illegal. Sitting there in the article with little context, and effectively having the last word.

I'm no friend of Free Republic, but this is not appropriate for a Wikipedia article. - Jmabel | Talk 18:13, 25 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going back on forth on whether to include it. I decided to leave it in, but am certainly open to a debate on the subject. I would ordinarily consider it a non-notable criticism, but it is likely more notable here when charged against a website full of "morality police." I also tried to make the statement a little less ambigous. I've removed the weasel word "critics" and named the specific critic. There may be other "critics" who have made a similar point, but the one I linked was where the quote actually came from. If we are going to include a direct quote, then we should definitely credit the quote in-line. The sentence has become a bit unweildy and someone with a better command of proper grammar may wish to take a look and rearrange it a bit. Sperril (talk) 17:07, 13 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

This is an opinion, and we report facts about opinions. The mainstream media don't give much coverage to political message boards, so when they do, any such criticism is probably notable enough to be reported. The way to balance it would be to include anything that Robinson or some FR supporter has said on the subject. JamesMLane t c 00:57, 16 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The line is absolutely a cheap shot, out of context and placed without response at the very end to make it appear Free Republic supports child porn. Given that Free Republic is a Judeo-Christian site with a strong Second Amendment focus, the last place in the world a child pornographer would want to show up is on Free Republic, they'd be hunted down like vermin. If this is the quality of editing, I hope to be fair you will edit the Planned Parenthood entry to reflect they are child killers, and since the ACLU represents NAMBLA surely they must supprt child sodomy. I mean, why not add a throw away line claiming everyone on the right is a child molester (though sexual freedom has long been a cause of the left), why be fair when you can just make up some thin accusation to sully an organization's name for political reasons.