A Call To Action: Ending The Political Game on ATS

reply to post by Bombeni


Not at all. I'm only giving you my opinion. Nothing more.

What SO and the staff choose to do is up to them, and them alone.

That's all.

And it continues. I even put a warning saying
" will start this topic with, DO NOT MUDSLING! DO NOT ATTACK THE MESSENGER! DEBATE THE MESSAGE, DISPUTE THE MESSAGE, DO NOT COMMENT ON THE MESSENGER!"

But a few posts later a member blatantly violates that by mudslinging, and even saying "I am commenting on the messenger."

So even with the rules, and with begging by me, the same people on here who are against the new rules continue to violate them.

reply to post by RRconservative


I agree with you RR, someone has Ats by the "err err"s , and the down time from yesterday almost looks like a threat by demonstrating THEY can bring this and other sites down.

I also think there is a MSNBC/ATS connection.
Which is why Obama is now being treated like a darling prima donna.

reply to post by Alxandro


You don't honestly believe that do you? Really?

I'm sorry, and not to be rude; but I find that ridiculous.

This is only a rule to keep discussion civil and on topic, nothing more.

I'm finding more and more that my time fighting for this here is pointless.

Even though all the Palin and McCain mudsling topics were taken down? You realize that proves you wrong.

SO and the Mods are doing the right thing. They have done away with the Rush Limbaugh/Hannity/Billo ways of mudslinging. Sorry it ruffles your feathers that you can't use words like muk muk and towelhead. But guess what? One of your own used those words, but I was warned when I lost my cool and went a little crazy. And guess what? I deserved those warnings as I violated the rules. Even if it was because the blatant racism that set me off, I still violated the rules.

Nyk, you and I... don't get along. But we both agree that these rules are important. See RR, Alexandro, Drone, Nyk and I, two different sides, agree these rules are needed. Does that say something about the importance of these rules? I think so.

[edit on 12-9-2008 by Krieger]

reply to post by Krieger


I think you're right. As I've said, these rules are not meant to keep us from disagreeing with each other. They are meant to keep our disagreements civil and on topic.

There is nothing wrong with that.

If we can't have civil discussion on the issues, then we obviously don't need to be having a discussion at all as far as I'm concerned.

I remained silent;


When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

If there were paid provocateurs trolling ATS, and they were disrupting discussion, wouldn't it be easier to address them individually instead of the entire board? It should be quite easy to identify them, and take action against them. How many could there be? A dozen?

I still have an issue with the definition of character. If a person is a known liar or plagiarist or whatever, many people may not vote for him/her. Stifling discussion of that aspect means we may unwittingly elect a crook or worse.

One final thing: many people here are looking for clarification on the rules. That does not mean they are a certain "type" of person, as has been alluded to. Unless you mean they are critical thinkers.

Question: If we see a thread that is clearly in violation of the new rules, based upon innuendo, rumors or opinion, with no sources, should we use the Alert button or Complaint function to notify the mods?

reply to post by nyk537


No, it certainly isn't.

When their sole equity lies in an audience whose opinion DOES matter (because without it their ads are being shown to a non-existent FOV), then it absolutely is not theirs and theirs alone. Unless they don't care about the RMR, then sure it is.


AB1

reply to post by Krieger


I'm not complaining. Just voicing my opinion. I believe in reality and in the real world you hear all kinds of things. That is when one makes a decision on what to believe and what to ignore.

The thing here is that as soon as somebody opened a thread saying Candidate A is a freak, Candidates A supporters would jump in to defend him. The power is the ability to ignore. For most of you who favor this change, how many times did you contribute to these threads. You helped to make them popular and now you act like you had no part in it.

reply to post by jsobecky


Any time you see anything on any forum that is a violation, you should hit the Alert or submit a complaint/suggestion. That's certainly preferable to engaging another member in-thread about a problem, which will only exacerbate the problem. Let staff handle it. That's why we get paid the Big Buck$. [That's a JOKE. As I think most everyone knows by now it's an all-volunteer staff]

Second best option is to ignore it and hope it dies of loneliness.

Originally posted by yeahright
reply to post by jsobecky

 

Any time you see anything on any forum that is a violation, you should hit the Alert or submit a complaint/suggestion. That's certainly preferable to engaging another member in-thread about a problem, which will only exacerbate the problem. Let staff handle it. That's why we get paid the Big Buck$. [That's a JOKE. As I think most everyone knows by now it's an all-volunteer staff]

Second best option is to ignore it and hope it dies of loneliness.

Yeah well that is what we have done all along, ignore and move on. But it is a new playing field now. Now posts are being deleted as fast as they are posted, yet certain posts which are very offensive remain. Talk about a clusterf---.

And why are they offensive? Because you don't agree with it? Debate the topic, BUT, don't mudsling.

That's what these rules are all about. NO MUDSLINGING! Even in a topic where I BEGGED people not to RR comes right in, declares he is going to mudsling, and does.

Originally posted by Bombeni
Now posts are being deleted as fast as they are posted, yet certain posts which are very offensive remain.

Do you have an example?

We do our best, but we never promise to get everything without the help of our members.

Originally posted by Bombeni
Yeah well that is what we have done all along, ignore and move on. But it is a new playing field now. Now posts are being deleted as fast as they are posted, yet certain posts which are very offensive remain. Talk about a clusterf---.

That may be what you've done, but that isn't what everyone does. A good prcentage tend to bark back in kind resulting in threads being taken way off course. If you think you see a post which is a violation, alert on it. It's a big site, things move rapidly. We may not stumble across something in a timely fashion, and the thread will continue to careen out of control resulting in even more editing, deleting, warning, drama, etc etc.

You might consider that we receive a whole lot of member feedback which isn't made public. We've had plenty of feedback leading up to this initiative, and since, which tells us we're doing what needs to be done. Perfectly? Absolutely not. It's messy and contentious and complex. Making everyone happy and throwing rose petals? Ummm.... no.

But we're doing everything in our overextended completely human power to make an improvement for everyone. We want NO ONE to leave. But we also don't want anyone disrupting the level of discourse we're attempting to attain.

And maybe it's a fool's errand, and people don't want intelligent discussion and would prefer to name call and poo fling. But we're betting that's not the case.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


I have to agree.

I have held my breath on a few and to the board's credit, they have been appropriately closed.

reply to post by Bombeni


I urge patience.

They'll mop up all in good time. Just help the mods by identifying them.

What I hope comes out at the end of all of this is a more disciplined member base dedicated to the principle of denying ignorance.



[edit on 12-9-2008 by loam]

I guess this needs to be posted again:

Mods not Gods

reply to post by Bombeni


As others have stated we are no where near perfect or even close to perfect.

BUT...

We have received emails and u2us from Conservatives claiming we are nothing but a "shill site" for the Liberals and we have received emails and u2us from Liberals claiming we are nothing but a "Neocon front board".

What does that tell us? That we are doing MUCH BETTER than we were before this initiative.

When both "sides" are calling foul we are shooting pretty straight down the middle.

Springer...

Ok, I was a little disturbed about this whole thing, but I must say all the threads that were locked, deserved it.

I would still like the opprotunity to read them if I want to though. Will they be deleted, or just locked?

I know it sounds a bit crazy that I would want to read half that, but everything on here is being talked about all over. I like to be able to shut people up with facts. I get those facts from here. Know what I mean?