Research Forum: Information and Guidelines

We have a new forum at ATS, and a new strategy for developing our own meaningful content here on ATS. The research forum will be very much like the debate and collaborative fiction forums where only members with a title of "ATS-Scholar" may post. The intent is to create a collaborative area where dedicated research teams can post their findings, compile theories, reject erroneous information, follow-up on rumor, and publish completed findings on various site-related topics. Once a team has completed their collaborative research and authored a final research "paper", it will be published to our news portal, and press releases will be broadcast to traditional media.

The methodology centers around a research leader who picks qualified forum members to engage in specific research on a given topic. The researchers are then encouraged to post their findings in their threads and discuss the possibilities within the forum. We want to encourage the use of a number of offline sources in addition to online. Contribution is rewarded by points for every post (250)... and if something astounding is uncovered, the entire research team gets an additional bonus (1,000 to 5,000 depending in what is uncovered). If the finished piece is carried by mainstream media (non-conspiracy sites), each member team will receive 50,000 points.

I want to stress that this effort is intended to be a serious and scholarly effort directed at discovering new aspects of existing or old theories related to government conspiracies, secret societies, aliens & UFO's, paranormal phenomenon, and other related site topics. We're not looking to rehash tired topics from Rense, BlackVault, or RumorMillNews, but to find new and credible angles that shed new light on these subjects. Team members should have some degree of experience in the topics being worked on.

Our first team leader volunteer is Toltec for a paranormal topic to be determined later.

I'd like to start by taking requests for team leaders. Please send your qualifications as a team leader to me/ADVISOR via U2U. Team leaders can be forum staff, members, or new members. What matters most is your degree of knowledge and experience on the topic being researched. Once team leaders are picked, you should work out a brief proposal for your topic, and submit it to our staff for approval. Once a topic is approved, team leaders will post their proposal in the research forum, and solicit applications for team members. The selection of team members is completely up to the research team leaders.



General Research forum rules/guidelines

1- This is for posts related to researching your project. Because of the points bonus, we expect that every post will be related to furthering the goals of your research project.

2- Team leaders are responsible for the quality of their research team members. Please take some time to ensure that your team members are capable of contributing meaningful content to your project.

3- Once a research project is selected, team members picked, and project launched, we expect some contribution to the project at least every 48 hours. Research projects that slip under this pace may be subject to removal or team modifications.

4- At the conclusion of a research project, team leaders receive an additional 2,500 points bonus, regardless of the outcome of the project.

5- Repeated unproductive posts by a team member (simple chatter, or non-productive comments) may result in removal of that team member and possibly the removal of all points they gained while working on the project.


We want this to be a serious effort and a shining example of what dedicated groups of ATS members can accomplish when engaged in single-minded collaboration on important topics.

[edit on 16-7-2004 by ADVISOR]