Just a small questin i hope it's alright. do these rules apply to the political forums? I mean if you want to talk politics then surely it's ok to there? Sorry if it seems like a stupid question, just want to be sure.

Is this thread subject to the same rules that have been mentioned? If so, I see some political stuff being thrown around where it is completely uncalled for.

It's Not Hard: Just Stay On Topic

While it is unfortunately necessary to take extra steps with regard to the phenomenon of partisan politics finding their way into every discussion, all this really boils down to is another way of trying to encourage members to stay on topic.

There actually aren't any new rules members need to follow. Members who stay on topic, honor the AboveTopSecret.com Terms And Conditions Of Use and cooperate with the staff when we need to step in don't need to worry about any of this, regardless of their politics.

These measures give us more options for working with members who have trouble keeping political finger-pointing out of everything, and will hopefully encourage all members to concentrate political discussion in PTS, where political opinions are always on topic.

For those wondering, this is definitely a difficult and recurring problem which negatively impacts our community, hence the need for us to take additional steps in resolving it.

Related thread from last summer:

The End of Political Baiting and Sniping on ATS

Unfortunately, Tha Troubleshoota has experienced the first 2-Day ATS "time out" and is limited to PTS access for 48 hours.

We're not kidding about this folks.

We can still talk about Countries policies right? it's not a left/right thing to talk about the US administration is it? I'm worried now because of my previous post. Could a mod let me know if that sort of respose to Troubleshoota is okay please and why? (it was a question afterall) Sorry but I did think about it for a while and.......well let me know.

[edit on 5-7-2006 by Xeros]

SO can you please highlight for which of the categories you listed was "Tha Troubleshoota" banned from ATS for? I think its obvious but I want to be clear.

Can I send him a U2U saying, "Ner ner nee ner ner, we all all talking about you in ATS and you cant see it!"

???? I didn't see many politics so much as I saw an opinion on this particular subject..and someone trying to explain why they might feel the way they do about a particular subject.

Then there were a few apologies in there as well?



Where's ATS going with this?!

??!

Exactly.

Dae, actually he can see if he just logs out, unless this is ISP specific, then again there are ways around that too.

Sigh... I wish you luck in this. Sorry for givng you so many extra headaches to manage on top of the website. I really apprecitate what the 3 of you and the Mods all do.

Will we see in a thread when someone is given the 2-day time out , sort of like the Warn flag people get. I would like to see who gets the timeouts, surely many of us are deserving of it at one time or another. I look forward to threads staying more on topic or being moved to PTS when necessary.

I think this policy should apply to all thread hijackings... not just the politcal bent.

[edit on 5-7-2006 by pavil]

He attempted to inject political drama into our announcement thread describing our new methods to limit political drama.

I think it's pretty clear.

Not so sure that I saw the same thing. But I guess you are the Mod.

Agreed on this, I think it would be a good thing to point out to folks examples of what won't be tolerated any more.

I think this is a great idea that will hopefully rid us of the politically motivated squabbling and help get everything back to serious discussions without the silly finger pointing and name calling!

No, he's Director of Community Development, and most difinitely correct.

There was no need to bring up Left wing and nonsense in one sentance for this thread topic

Kudos to the mods!...

It's about time!...

Been waiting on this one along time....I've seen way too many topics stray from their original course when people start arguing their love/hate for our government...

I hope it is dealt with using a heavy hand....

It has a place here, but people need to keep it IN that place....

thumbs WAY up!




JSquared


PS: goodbye steve99.....

Right that's it you're suspended too for blasphemy. He is the Administrator.
I think they had an itchy trigger finger though Give em some girth, it's early days after all. Ps could Skeptic or another mod answer my previous post. Please

Alright, thanks for clearing that up for me.

There are plenty of ways to speculate about, or talk about, potential conspiracies and scandals within any government without reverting to political side-taking and name calling.

Reviewing potential government conspiracies and scandals, or covering history's conspiracies and scandals will always be an important part of ATS.

It's actually really easy.

Take something like Iraq. Say there is a scandel, where an Army Officer is found to have attacked Civilians on Orders of the General. You can discuss the attack, however, it crosses the line when you blame the Republican Party and its supporters for it.

It's about taking an incident, evaluating if it did or didn't happen. There needs to no mention of political party, unless they were directly involved. [Which needs to be sourced with evidence] Even then though, the other party never needs to be mentioned.