Truth is Buried at ATS... Anyone Digging?

In this day and age of mass information one needs to realize that information is money. We can find out what the majority thinks on certain subjects and also find out what the minority thinks. Companies pay big bucks for this type of information, and so do advertisers. They like to advertise to the "swarm" as dances so aptly put it.

So by improving a site or making it the best it can be, everyone benefits. The owners grow wealthy off of the advertising dollars, The swarm gets to know what the best ideas are, the researcher gets to know what the majority/minority thinks and it explodes and suddenly becomes a site for much more than discourse on a myriad of strange subjects, but also on current events and paranormal happenings. It could become huge if done right, and yes it would mean a lot of hard work and changing around, but it would be worth it to advance the "colony".

The site has much room for improvement, and all big companies should try to improve as they grow larger and not knock down new and better ideas to be content with the status quo.

Very good points raised here and I sometimes feel the same way about the signal to noise ratio on ATS.

I was reading some threads today about the economy and realised I would probably never find them again with thread tags gone (yeah I'm one of those people who has a hard time finding something I know I saw on ATS).

That was a system ATS attempted to implement to help people classify material themselves and make it easy to find. It failed miserably as people made a mess of it. Of course that's the problem right? We're dealing with people and no man in an island unto himself. You have to put up with people.

The way I see it (or rationalize it) is that this is a discussion board and not a library and I'm not sure it is the place to find "truth" (or somebody's version of it anyways) but I sympathize with the points raised.

ATS is more of a process whereby spending lots of time here helps you grow and learn and get a grip on the world as opposed to finding ready made answers all pre-packaged and approved by ??someone?? (doesn't religion do that?).

Much like life, everybody on ATS has a different experience and arrives at their version of the 'truth". Besides, does objective truth really exist? I think some dudes called Plato and Socrates started that argument a long time ago but I don't recall the outcome.
.

I totally concur with the OP.. There is alot of really good threads that get buried over time, and threads get really long a convoluted beyond belief. This is more or less a data mining exercise for ATS or *someone* to solve. The typical board model is kind of awkward for the volume of data posted here, and I'd say there needs to be some alternate interface (or query method) to rank the data, so the cream rises to the surface.

I hesitated posting this because it may sound odd, but here goes.

I believe my mind to be a filtering-device which is only able to perceive those things or is only drawn to those things or only attracted to those things which match my current mindset/attitude/belief-system.

In other words, "the truth" could be right in front of my nose, but I wouldnt notice it if Im not in the mindset/mood for it. Likewise, when logging-on in a different state-of-mind I will be attracted to and find different type of information.

In this sense, everyone will find the type of information that matches his/her mindset...that doesnt over- or underwhelm it. I think each and every reader will get what he/she "deserves", so to speak.

Intuition goes a long way in finding gems here. Ive spent a significant amount of time in the ATS-Archives running soley on hunches...with very satisfying results. Of course...if finding info is not my prime intention and I instead wish to boost my ego, make friends or bash someone, I cant expect to find those gems.

One thing I sometimes do when looking for specific information: I start a thread on the topic, providing as much information as I can and know, and then let the thousands of other readers and writers fill in the blanks for me. Thats called collaboration.

Being extremely choosy of what topics to pursue is also helpful.

In any case, isnt this place just a reflection of the way the entire world works in these times? Having several million options teaches us to narrow down, focus, decide.

State's Trolls 'Push Back' Against Anti-U.S. Bloggers

By David Axe September 19, 2008 | 9:30:00 AM

Categories: Info War

The U.S. State Department is using a wide range of tactics to win over the populations of hostile countries such as Iran, according to James K. Glassman, Under Secretary For Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. "We want to bring people together," Glassman said during a teleconference on Wednesday. He listed programs ranging from pro-democracy videos to inviting the Iranian national basketball team to play in Salt Lake City.

But one initiative he cited really stood out. State employs eight professional Internet "trolls" whose job it is to log onto blogs in unfriendly countries and "push back" against what Glassman says is misinformation about the U.S.

[T]hey enter into digital conversations online either on other people’s blogs or other websites. And they identify themselves as working for the United States Government ... [A]t times they will ... say, you know, that’s not accurate, here’s the truth about U.S. policy and here’s a link, you can go to America.gov, you can go somewhere else. They do this in Arabic, Farsi, Urdu, and by the way, we hope soon, in Russian.

blog.wired.com...

All part of full spectrum dominance and ATS would definitely be included in their efforts. While the article only talks about mild trolling, I'm sure it also relates to information recording, hacking, flaming and all the other standard cointel methods they use.

[edit on 2008-9-21 by primamateria]

I have investiagted TinWiki, and have found it to be much like wikipedia, and so I think this is going to help. I don't know why I haven't spent any tme there.

...Okay, so having given this a lot of thought, I am much more inclined toward the TinWiki talk: pages now, than toward ATS itself. A wiki page can be extended and even indented in heirarchical fashion, as opposed to this model. But the BBS-message board format allows compartmentalization of things, the wiki format is presumably more transparent and that is my desire, in regards to this idea of "Truth" as Pilate mused.

...My other obvious reason for arriving at this solution, is that the ads on TinWiki are far less obtrusive (just a google ad on the side) ...But does this mean that if people start posting to tiniwiki instead of here in ATS-threadland, the ATS heirarchy will suffer? I don't want to hurt anyone's dreams of financial independence in pursuit of truth.

But anyway, I wanted to find a solution, and I think I will work with this one for a while.

TinWiki

For example, at the link above, you'll see my TinWiki user:talk page, where we can continue discussing these events, in a non-threaded, limited way, perhaps even spatially or having users include graphics such as I have enjoyed doing in my posts (adding user file space for the free acounts is a great feature, and don't think I don't know that)



I would like to use this thread to encourage the use of TinWiki. If any Mod is reading, please change the title of this thread to the following:

"Truth is Buried at ATS: Start Digging."


...If everyone is amenable to that.

If anything, using TinWiki will make it easier for people to identify the obfuscators. The format allows so much more breadth of information to be posted. If every member of ATS works toward enriching that forum, I think much headway can be made.


[EDIT: Corrected link, check it out and post on my user talk page if you want, also make your own TinWiki page/account so you can begin to build your own web of connections.]

[edit on 21-9-2008 by smallpeeps]

I wanted to show you what I am doing on my tinWiki page, in regards to the issues I complain about.

In this picture you can see where on my tinWiki user page, I am creating very simple wiki markup and organizing the things I'm seeing, both on ATS and on the internet in general.

In the TOC at the top of my talk page, you can just click on "ATS THREADS" and it'll take you down to that section. Feel free to edit appropriately with links to create a more threaded model of discussion.

Similar threads and ideas and can given subheadings (Reinhardt is just the first example).


I encourage all of you, to create your own tinWiki user pages so you can help gather these threads together. Let's hope the simplicity of tinWiki will create less confusion when discussion information.

I think if the ATS body of threads can be seen as a sort of mish-mash, by using the tinWiki format, we can each pick out the threads we want to highlight, and thereby also allow others to add their own research. --OBFUSCATORS AND VANDALS will surely not be tolerated, so go ahead and make your tinWiki page your own!


...Oh and if you need help learning to code wiki markup, use this link:

wiki/Help:Wikitext_examples

Wow, Gools got deleted?

Good thing some threads hang around so we can see who's been lost. What was the story there? U2U me if its heretical to discuss it out loud.

Anyway. Yeah.

Originally posted by smallpeeps
Wow, Gools got deleted?

Good thing some threads hang around so we can see who's been lost. What was the story there? U2U me if its heretical to discuss it out loud.

Anyway. Yeah.

edit on 8-2-2012 by smallpeeps because: RIP tinwiki

Looks like someone pulled it due to gools dumbassery. For a document archivist to be that insulting doesn't look good. Hopefully everyone with an ATS tag under their name isn't that ignorant.

Small peeps, this is a much needed topic. I have felt very much the same frustration almost to the point of being maddening! How many times are we going to remind people about the search function, and then low and behold a week later another repeat thread comes out? Not wanting to weed through a buch of BS and wanting someone else to do the work for you is very different. I wish the research forum was still active, but it seems most of the Scholars are no longer active with it. Something has to give.... ATS is getting pretty damn cluttered up lately.

EDIT!

My apologies, I was not referring to gools, I was referring to sensfan. Whose dumb post has not been removed from the first page of this thread.

Originally posted by W3RLIED2

Originally posted by smallpeeps
Wow, Gools got deleted?

Good thing some threads hang around so we can see who's been lost. What was the story there? U2U me if its heretical to discuss it out loud.

Anyway. Yeah.

edit on 8-2-2012 by smallpeeps because: RIP tinwiki

Looks like someone pulled it due to gools dumbassery. For a document archivist to be that insulting doesn't look good. Hopefully everyone with an ATS tag under their name isn't that ignorant.

Small peeps, this is a much needed topic. I have felt very much the same frustration almost to the point of being maddening! How many times are we going to remind people about the search function, and then low and behold a week later another repeat thread comes out? Not wanting to weed through a buch of BS and wanting someone else to do the work for you is very different. I wish the research forum was still active, but it seems most of the Scholars are no longer active with it. Something has to give.... ATS is getting pretty damn cluttered up lately.

EDIT!

My apologies, I was not referring to gools, I was referring to sensfan. Whose dumb post has not been removed from the first page of this thread.

edit on 8-2-2012 by W3RLIED2 because: Explained

Thanks W3RLIED2 I hear what you mean.

And a big thanks to Gools and anyone who disappears. Hope they get to come back and explain why all those replies and stars go ploop into the abyss.

Does ATS show up on the wayback machine? Well anyway, it's cool that they let the posts remain. ATS does value the sanctity of the thread. Other domains are not so good at it.

I miss tinwiki is the point of this thread. It was awesome. Tinwiki was the shovel with which we could have tried dig and create "superthreads" or whatever.

We really should identify the "superthreads" on the IP network. They need to be printed onto paper and filed in the libraries. As testaments to how stupid we were, or at least how stupid the automatic robot posters were. I mean if it's good software, probably it talks and replies like a human.

Can we at least identify the bots? That would require the domayzn to get together, because only they have the IP addresses and know the real from the fake, in the IP "battlespace", as they deem it. Only the owners can identify the bot-posters and they can't because this would end the age of fingerpuppets.

I for one, am all for free IP network I think tinwiki was a huge leap forward but I guess a mod could post as to why it got killed.