The End of Political Baiting and Sniping on ATS (was ALL MEMBERS READ), page 9

Originally posted by Valhall

Originally posted by namehere

Originally posted by Springer
There is NOTHING in that statement that seeks to limit the content of political conversation only the intent of said political insertion.

and theres nothing to prevent a moderator from construing things a person might say as violating this new role, you guessing ones intent easily will cause problems, mods are never 100% correct or unbiased so how is giving them power of unilateral descretion of intent a good idea? your rule has no clear declaration here, we're supposed to trust no mod will abuse this power either on purpose or by having a bias and assuming intent based on it?

Actually, you're just supposed to get the point of this thread and let the checks and balances in place in the moderation of this site work its own problems out. I think the short story is that what they review and say "yeah that was a good moderation move" is what we'll have to live with. This isn't a democracy.

Namehere: Spot on!

Several important factors have presented themselves over the years with this board, most importantly its drive to own a portion of the internet and grow/retain, sustaining costs. The 'cost' here being it's original demeanor & tenor. A collateral damage cost is the weakening of the member gene pool - the site's then new milquetoast demeanor spurred an exodus of some stalwart members from regular posting, as well as making the marquee ATS brand a sterile receptacle to corporate advertising, devoid of the type of heated debate which drove site traffic during the most dangerous political climate of our respective life times.
The Yanks back in those days who posted in the political forum were 90% conservative. They all became staff during the growth spikes. And because of the illusion that is American politics ( the proverbial “Ying/Yang” two poles model), picking a “side” with the loquacious jingoists who found an icon in 2000 was a natural. This current initiative had its root need to be enacted at that very point in time, but given the moral depravity we all endured for the 1992 to 2000 period, there really would have been a disservice in quieting such ‘righteous’ belligerence.
The traffic grew more robust with the news portal addition, at the same time of the manufactured neo-conservatism/Puritanism in America + the logical opposition to it + the media marketing of the perception that it was really more than it actually was + the willful divide of the populace ( see: Divide & Conquer). Thus the birth of the splinter sites ( BTS, PTS and so on) in order to placate the desire to be sanitized enough to accept advertisers.
What should be obvious to those of critical thought is that this is solely a business decision. It’s not the altruistic desire to preserve a genteel discourse that was not there at inception; because true argument is predicated on a type of Darwinism where transparent sycophancy and bleeding team colors is drawn-measured-found wanting, and derision is a swift retort to the lunatic fringe flight of fancy examples suffered upon us. (The exact opposite outcome then occurs: people think the board is counter to real life when it’s actually representative of it – people are never too gracious to vociferous stupidity, yet we’ll enforce that they should be here! ) No, it’s the only logical response to a rock/hard place business scenario: the CURRENT EVENTS FORUMS don’t belong on ATS, yet are the big traffic drivers to ATS and are the very ones that need to be on the ugly kid sister, PTS, where the type of spirited discourse is more readily accepted.

If you’ve been here long enough, you’ve seen the above and understand you’re now a guest audience member in an infomercial more so than an unexpurgated contributor.......just don’t tell Ron Popiel his “hair” is sprayed on!!

It’s still a great product by virtue of the membership’s diversity on interests....other sites just don’t have Libertarian practitioner of Santeria who’ve seen ghosts and can recite the periodic table while telling you about the latest death ray the US military is rolling out.

In brevity & eloquence, a better summation of my point, just swap the obvious keywords:

Originally posted by Odium
Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, a book by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky.
..."the pressure to create a stable, profitable business invariably distorts the kinds of news items reported, as well as the manner and emphasis in which they are reported. This occurs not as a result of conscious design but simply as a consequence of market selection: those businesses who happen to favor profits over news quality survive, while those that present a more accurate picture of the world tend to become marginalized."