Apolitical Agenda
Originally posted by ceci2006
But what is the criteria for someone having an agenda and someone who doesn't have one? Could someone spell this out so the terminology will be very
clear?
There's nothing wrong with having an agenda.
Most members have some sort of agenda. That's not necessarily a bad thing.
The key in this case is actually what most members already do anyway: stay on topic.
The problem the measures outlined in this thread are intended to address is the phenomenon of a small percentage of members habitually driving
discussions off-topic by injecting political rhetoric where it doesn't belong.
Examples:
Topic: Bush knew about 9/11 before it happened
Troll says: "You liberals blame Bush for everything."
Topic: Martian pyramids
Troll says: "Halliburton!"
Topic: The meaning of John 3:16
Troll says: "Forget about Jesus, why don't you just worship Bush."
Just to name a few.
Team ATS
Of course, it's often more subtle than this, which is why ATS maintains a first-rate team of highly-skilled, enthusiastic and extraordinarily
attractive moderators to deal with problems like these.
We are specially trained to identify off-topic digressions and steer threads back where they belong.
As with any modern field of combat, though we take great pride in our marksmanship, friendly fire casualties are possible if members don't take care
to avoid resembling enemies.
Thus when a moderator makes a request to stay on topic, it's important to recognize and respect the importance of doing so, even if you just wanted
to get that one last zinger in.
We are sensitive to the needs of members to be able to speak candidly and discuss topics with minimal encumbrance, but when a moderator request is
ignored or met by derisive comments, we are clear to go "weapons hot" and bring an otherwise renegade thread back into
T&C compliance -- and ship would-be ATS terrorists off to Gitmo or rendition to
countries legendary for their methods of torture.
All this is generally transparent to most members -- or at least as much as we can make it -- to reduce disruption of the topics members come here to
discuss.
But the objective in all cases is the same: to help make ATS the kind of community the members want it to be.
It's not just staff who do this, but all members who care about ATS.
We are all a team, and Denying Ignorance is the goal.

Of course, I'm being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, and we don't ship (most) troublesome members off to Gitmo, but I hope the point is clear: it
doesn't have to be hard, doesn't have to be dramatic and doesn't have to be a fight. We can do this.