anyone notice a lot of fake posts?

Originally posted by QueenofWeird
O please....this site is for "crazy" subjects. What I find silly, somebody else might find interesting. Regarding the Pokemon thread, please remember what the OP was about: people saying the same things about Pokemon as others here about aliens. His question was more than legitimate.

You can not judge the starting post by the reactions it gets. And maybe it is me, but when people say things as nothing to see, move along I start to think.....mmmm let me just continue reading this thread

Thank you for achknowledging that. I'v been accused of actually believing Pokemon exist because of that thread, its amaizing how people jump to their own conclusions.

It was meant to be a discussion but I'm pretty sure i would have had the same response if I had posted it in a Christian forum about Jesus- some people treat this stuff like its a religion. I only asked for a discussion but instead I got a torrent of abuse for it.

[edit on 27-3-2008 by dodgygeeza]

reply to post by saturnus1962


That was a fantastic post too saturnus1962 I may add! Kudos

I'm actually amazed that more people haven't contributed to it! Perhaps people are looking for debates right now? Must be a moon phase or something

Originally posted by jcavs88
This ATS is all fake anyways. Come on people do you really believe the things you read here?

So humor me jcavs88 and tell me why your here then?

I don't believe it's all fake. That's pretty closed minded.. but if I'm wrong and it is all fake, and you already know everything about the universe, there's no need for you to be here any longer yeah?

Absolutist attitudes.... Why do I even bother? pfffft

Not condoning the "far out there" posts, but it is not hard to pick them out and ignore them. I usually scan the first page aliens/ufos and maybe see 1 or 2 threads that could be genuine or catch my interest.

The one thing that bothers me about them is the constant barrage everyday can bump down the good stuff. Almost as if it is intentional.

[edit on 27-3-2008 by Starwatcher]

Maybe the MODS answer to excessive tagging( as tagging previously gave members points) was to remove the points award system, is the answer here. remove points for people replying to threads etc and we might see a reduction in the frivolous threading that the OP is refering to. Perhaps point could be accrued through people flagging and starring post.....these ideas have probably been discussed before.....maybe i should start a new thread on this...hehe

reply to post by atlasastro


I think your onto something there atlasastro. Nice embryonic idea!

However in saying that, I think some of these people who post junk or are clearly lying for notoriety need a few contrary posts to bring them back to Earth.

Keep working that idea bud, nice one!

Things have changed around here, I think. When I first joined, I could barely keep up. Now, more and more often, with some notable and respectable exceptions, there isn't as much that seems challenging. Some are clearly bogus trolls, come are contentious to no purpose, some are blatantly bear-baiting; the thought-provoking threads seem somehow harder and harder to find.

I'm not saying I haven't had a good few sparring matches in recent months, but I don't think my eyes have been opened to anything radically new, nor that I've been able to alert anyone to an alternative view to the one they already doggedly held. I can live without achieving the one, I could survive without achieving the other, but to go without either on a forum whose primary objective is to look beyond what is widely known and extrapolate from available evidence....

There's a whole lot of rumour-mongering going on around here, and practically none of it even deserves to be considered as "disinformation".

Why don't I go away, then? Because there are exceptions and those are what we believe in who are here to explore and analyse the possibilities of extreme reality.

I am choosy in reading and posting on threads..
and you are right from last week i am seeing a lot of trash threads...
so I am trying to keep myself busy outside ATS... which is my best place... but there are some good threads also going around...

at the times when there are not much good threads active... i read old ones
Deny ignorance... keep thinking

reply to post by InfaRedMan


Thx mate, i agree that people need a firm reality check by way of the reply element within threads, but at the moment OP's get rewarded for it......it just does'nt make sense. We can rely on two things here on ATS....people will make bold claims and statements.......and people will challenge them vigourously....we need to reward quality....not frequency.

Originally posted by Palasheea
Well, the Pokeman thread definitely had potential for a meaningful and relevant discussion in this forum but the longer it was active, the more silly it got.

I posted a comment in it but then deleted it when it became apparent to me that no one was reading over the information I posted and or commenting on it.

I said in that post that the day before I was doing some research on the net where I stumbled on a very interesting article by Dr. Steve Mizrach, a well known and esteemed physicist. And even though the article is about another subject matter where he pretty much echoed an on-going conversation by many European electrical engineers and physicists in the ITC field that's been going on now for several years now -- there's one section in his essay that I thought was relevant to the Pokeman thread; so I posted it in that thread and here's that section of that article:

William Gibson's book Count Zero discusses a strange future in which AI entities in cyberspace have taken on the personalities of deities from Haitian folklore, and even "possess" the minds of devotees. Gibson suggests that once computer networks reach a certain complexity, so will the AIs that exist on them... and that such AIs might eventually take on a consciousness and autonomy of their own. As I have suggested elsewhere, electronic technology depends on the mysterious numinous world described by Quantum Electrodynamics (QED.) QED makes the electronic computer, that supremely rational device, possible, but its equations also describe a world where action occurs at a distance and certainties are replaced by probabilities. At the level of the quantum (below the Planck length), some physicists expect, parallel universes may interpenetrate. Should we be surprised, then, that the computer puts us in touch with other worlds beyond our own?

Most importantly, there are increasing amounts of evidence that human consciousness emerges out of quantum properties in the brain. It may be the case that consciousness is a nonlocal quantum effect, and thus might appear in substrates other than human brains - perhaps in nonmaterial entities? Artificial life researchers are discovering that their computer-generated creations often seem to take on a sort of "life" of their own, beginning with the creators of the simple cellular-automata game of Life at MIT. Such AI beings can move from computer system to system; they are patterns of organization which are not dependent on any particular hardware platform. The evidence from complexity theory is that once AIs and ALs reach a certain level of organization, spontaneous jumps of "emergence" of new phenomena might occur. Perhaps the mysterious emergent phenomenon of self-consciousness? Might beings emerge within the interpenetrating field of quantum interactions known as cyberspace?

Source: www.fiu.edu...



[edit on 26-3-2008 by Palasheea]

Hmmm. Well written. Coherent. Good punctuation and spelling. This post doesn't belong here.

I understand the concerns of the people posting here. I even think there's a certain validity to the question being raised. But, (Isn't there always one of those pesky little things?) there's another side to this problem.

Unlike repressive nations at large, ATS doesn't set itself up as some authority on what is authentic and what is trivial, we let the members do that. You represent the board of standards here. Are you too lazy to flag and star? Too sensitive to post a single paragraph to a good thread? Too dull to contribute a single question to a well researched article? If the quality is low, then who really is to blame in an environment where the members generate the content?

Now we could cut down on the threads that are less intellectually challenging, less well written, less researched. But do you really want some faceless moderator doing that for you? Really? Do you want some "Board of Standards" to impose what it finds worthwhile and what it doesn't and standing between you and what's out there?

You have no idea just how much wailing and gnashing of teeth we get over what little we do moderate these forums. To try and regulate some arbitrary standards would result in wholesale screaming and crying. And it wouldn't be just those who had a thread deleted for "excessive stupidity" either. There would be hundreds of you paranoids who would set up a hue and cry about us taking something away before you had a chance to explore the possibility. There would be accusations of vile censorship, CIA involvement, and downright Nazi Moderators.

There is however a very simple solution to the problem. Post Good Threads Yourself. Flood the board with well thought out and researched articles. Don't give in to the voices of mediocrity, fight back with the one true weapon sure to beat it; sheer brilliance. You, each one of you, on an individual basis, is responsible for this site and what is posted here. Be it good or bad, it reflects what you put into it.

(There could even be a case made that this very thread is nothing more than a unthought out adventure into complaining for the sake of complaining, and therefore ought be deleted as being unworthy of the high intellectual standards some seem to feel is missing here on ATS. As such, a proto ATS Sanity in Journalism squad might even now be considering the worth of all proceeding posts. )

Now the forgoing is only my personal comment on the matter, and is not necessarily the position of other moderators, administration, or ATS as an organization.

Couldnt agree more. "Aliens paved my driveway?" C'mon. Insubstantial posts are growing like weeds round here. Time to cut.

Even more shocking is the amount of stars these guys are getting. Its a mystical world.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.

I suppose there is a time and purpose for all posts, where to learn, laugh, question or ignore. I have finally reached the point where I can just let some of them pass by on their journey to wherever. Actually the posts along the lines of what is being discussed here become a good study of people and personalities.

The really interesting thing to me would be to know if some one would post in the same vain if their real name or identity was attached to it versus an anonymous internet identity.

My first post was in the Pokemon thread. I decided to join not because I think Pokemon exist in my hedgerow but because I noticed that the thread was starting to fill not with the comments and critique that I would expect but with derision and mockery. The overarching subject matter may be a bit silly but even in that we can learn a bit about ourselves and the world. How we think and believe.

Threads like that wouldn't hover at the top of the list if people didn't feel the need to bump the topic with derisive or pointless comments. How much of threads like that are not constructive criticism or examination of a topic from all angles but instead comments along the lines of "ROFLMAO cant believe you are all so dumb..childish.LOL"

Not that anyone goes quite that far here but I think you see the point. The bad comes with the good. In order for us all to have a voice all voices must be heard.

I think the mods should pay more attention to the ridiculous posts about "non" alien/UFO topics and throw them into skunkworks ASAP. Imagine a first time reader of the site and you see under the Aliens/UFO section something about pokemon? would you take this site seriously? I sure wouldn't.

I'm here because of the chance that maybe, just maybe, someone will post that undeniable proof of existence.

I can't put all the blame on the mods for not taking a closer look at how this affects the site and credibility if there even is any. Although the readers on this site should also look and realize what they are doing, by flagging stupid posts and replying to posts that are obviously speculation, it throws lame topics about these things right the front page headlines as if its important to read.


Next important topic....do smurfs exist?

2 cent rant over.

I happen to think theirs a lot of dissinfo agents floating about these forums.

Lets face it, the feds will be sifting these forums (and others like it) with fine tooth combs.

fake posts? no. dissinfo agents, deffo.

When I walk into a large library, I know that many if not most of the books are of little interest and I won't ever read them. I walk right by those books without a second thought and go to the books I do want to read. I can see that those books I don't care for are as worn and well read as the books that I do wish to read. That has never bothered me as I know it is a public library and the Librarians are not picking out books to please only me, but are correctly buying a wide range of books to cover a wide range of tastes.

At home I have a small library that contains only books that I like. I don't care that others may not find what they want because its purpose is to only serve my needs.

ATS is meant to serve many just like the public library. One need only walk by those books that hold no interest to them and be pleased that ATS has a wide variety of topics including ones that interest them.

Most of these threads are government sponsored to make ufology a complete joke. The casual skeptic that does not have time to sort through all the garbage will see the pattern and quit. That is their goal!

The solution is either ignore them completly or chasticize them properly without getting banned. I prefer the first because the second is risky and depends on the moderators mood that particular day.

Man I wish we had a free speech site where anything goes. These family sites are wimpy.

Originally posted by EarthCitizen07
Most of these threads are government sponsored to make ufology a complete joke.

I would like to believe the same thing, EC. But UFOlogy is brimming with crazies as it is. All the govt. agents have to do is just sit back and let us do the work.

Originally posted by VisionQuest

Originally posted by EarthCitizen07
Most of these threads are government sponsored to make ufology a complete joke.

I would like to believe the same thing, EC. But UFOlogy is brimming with crazies as it is. All the govt. agents have to do is just sit back and let us do the work.

Probably not as many as you may think. Sure there are crazies but there are crazies in every subject. Ufology is not the exception to the rule!

In my opinion, the only reason this subject is somewhat "tar and feathered" is because of the severe lack of exposure by the mainstream media and government foul play/harrasement. They create the silliness to distract the skeptics while the debunkers derail the more legitimate threads. Its all part of a well coordinated effort to keep the people ignorant!

[edit on 27-3-2008 by EarthCitizen07]