Liberty… If You Dare
CYBERSPACE – September 13, 2002: LibertyForum (http://www.libertyforum.org), a web-based political discussion forum, has emerged from an intensive 1 year beta-testing phase and has opened its electronic doors to the general public. During its testing period, a group of approximately 400 dedicated users logged over 200,000 individual posts to test LibertyForumís PHP based forum software, which reviewers consider one of the best implementations of web-based discussion on the Internet.
LibertyForum is organized around the discussion of news-items and political topics, and places the libertarian principles of its creators firmly ahead of site popularity or narrowly ideology. Membership is not restricted to any particular political camp, a fact that has resulted in the wide spectrum of political opinion and ideas presented by forum members.
A key aspect of LibertyForum’s commitment to libertarian principles is its environment of open-debate. Rather than rely on moderators, post deletions, poster banishment, or other types of forum censorship, LibertyForum allows its members to decide for themselves what it is they want to read. Comments are rated by the forum’s membership through the use of a Post Rating System based on Slashdot.org’s (http://Slashdot.org) “Karma” moderation system. This fosters a system of meritocracy, where posts are rated according to their content, and where members are free to set their reading preferences at whatever threshold they prefer.
LibertyForum’s growing expertise in the delivery of web-discussion services has led it to seek and establish strategic partnerships with a variety other Liberty oriented organizations. These organizations are able to utilize LibertyForum’s infrastructure to provide discussion services for their members; this at no cost to the organization or its members. True to its focus on the individual, LibertyForum also actively promotes an international atmosphere that welcomes the participation of posters throughout the world.
With a current, and growing, user base of over 600 members, and daily posting activity that often exceeds 1,500 individual posts, LibertyForum is poised to become the premier Liberty oriented discussion forum on the web. To find out more about LibertyForum, or to become a member, please visit http://www.libertyforum.org.
Contact: John Deere
forums@libertyforum.org
http://www.libertyforum.org
Some associates of mine are forming a similar board at this time (except ours uses the far sweeter UBBthreads). While the current trend in high-level cyber-discussion is through blogs with everybody hyperlinking to each other’s posts, I think the BBS format is far more elegant.
I think it is a mistake to think BBS and Blogs are ‘competitor’ formats as they fulfill different roles. A BBS has interaction as its primary aim, a blog is more ‘editorial’ in nature, with interaction from readers only as a secondary aim (i.e. in that respect we are more like a newspaper which publishes readers letters).
LibertyPost is much better, unless your taste runs to duscussions of how Sept. 11 was a Mossad plot and the evil that is the Jew.
LibertyPost is fine but the trouble with all forums is they inevitably attract their fair share of barking moonbats who think Jewish Bolshevik Banker Trilaterist Lizards are somehow conspiring to cause every woe in the world and that the Protocols of the Eldars of Zion was not a work of fiction. Sad but true.
“Texoma” and “JustStopIt” inviting numerous anti-Semites, Arab apologists, and (in the case of “Kudzu”) probable paid whores of the Saudi state during the beta phase (which lasted over a year, during which no one not invited could post) is not its “fair share”. Nor does it have anything to do with free speech, since it’s an artifact of the restrictive invitation policy. The dominant character of LibertyForum is anything but libertarian; the posters constituting the “mainstream” of the forum regularly bring up how much they wish David Irving had won his harassment suit. Indeed, except for some probable ADL types bringing their arguments to where the anti-Semites are (and the one who knows…), there’s no disagreement with the moonbats. You may as well link to Democratic Underground and say every forum attracts liberals.
hmmm… I will check that all out
Liberty Forum has some fruticakes, some nuts and some incredibly well-informed people.
It takes all kinds, like in the meatspace.
As “An Observer”, who presumably is or was an LF member from his comments, must be well aware, the libertarian character of LibertyForum lies not necessarily in its membership (which is open to all) but in its management and censorship policies.
These are to interfere as little as possible with political discussion, and to regard no unpleasant political viewpoint as “taboo”, but rather fair game for rebuttal by the membership. Those who do not care to be associated with such a site in case they suffer the unbearable pain of being forced to ignore drivel or the expression of a view they hate, or who fear guilt by association with such views, are not forced to participate (obviously).