Originally posted by JaxonRoberts
First, I have to state that I stay far, far away from the 9/11 threads!
I personally don't buy the whole 'inside job' conspiracy, and when I have expressed such an opinion and given my reasons for why I don't, I get ripped apart and called all sorts of names, so I stay away..

My friend, after a statement like that.... for you to talk about anyone having thin skin is very hypocritical. And since you do not even visit the 911 forums anyways for fear of being ripped apart by those 'inside job" believers I fail to see how you could know whats going on there currently.

It looks to me that you have commented out of ignorance.

I'm just saying, I think you saw this thread as an opportunity to vent your frustrations of failure about not being able to handle the heat of a very heated forum.

And I do not appreciate comments like 'thin skinned' or waaaaaambulance.

Juvenile comments like that have no place here. ATS maybe family friendly but we are all mature adults here that can express ourselves without resorting to "middle school 'put downs'".

I don’t post often in the 9-11 forums. Some of the people have put so much time and effort into their research, while others have spent so much time debating each other a relative new comer to ATS like me is sometimes made to feel out of place and intruding to a certain extent. Especially when you aren’t that familiar with all the theories, and it’s kind of like why is the new kid in class raising his hand? He wasn’t here when we studied this!

I do post a lot on Middle East issues which in many ways 9-11 is a Middle East issue whether you favor inside job/truth movement, or you favor the official story.

Middle East issues like 9-11 can be very passionate debates, some members whom I very much admire for their over all intelligence and vast array of knowledge on a vast number of subjects don’t always appreciate some of the controversial stances I will passionately debate.

A few of them have been real dragged out knock down, up and down, back and forth debates.

I have put a few people on ignore, but recently I tried something else with a couple of people who are as opposite in their positions as you could get and still be on the same planet.

I said you know, you might not think so but I actually like you and respect your intelligence and even though I don’t agree with some of your positions or the way you debate them sometimes I want to show my real admiration and respect and put you on my friends list.

So I would put them on my friends list and try real hard when debating them forward to always stress the fact that I think of them as a friend.

It took a little bit of effort and time to win them over, these are people who would have preferred to see me hung at Nuremburg rather than have to debate me on some things they would prefer to dance around or just ignore.

Yet for what its worth its worked and our debates have got much friendlier, they have stopped all together trying to bait me in the debates, and they have stopped all together trying to insult me in our debates, and of course I try extra hard not to bait them either or insult them either and choose my words as carefully as I can to eliminate any kind of reference that makes it personally about them or could be twisted to be personally about them.

We actually have believe it or not become very friendly with one another if not down right friends, even though neither they nor I have moved one inch on our positions.

We even exchange an occasional friendly U2U message with one another now and then, and even have starred and supported each other on the rare threads we are in agreement on the topic and find some joy in the fact that there are some things we can see eye to eye on.

I have never hit an alert button, I have a handful of people on my ignore list.

Every week to 10 days or so I just purposefully try to stay off of ATS for a few days especially if it’s a very passionate issue for people. I do that when I start to feel my own passions rise to the point I start becoming tempted to say things that would be a T & C violation.

I think the staff does a great job overall, for the most part they are real fair, and for the most part they seem to always be trying to improve.

This is just a theory, a conspiracy if you will, but I do believe there are a few long standing members that do post some very controversial statements and go way over the T & C line that the staff ignores.

I think that they do that because they feel it is in the best interest of the site to have a few very rancorous people who they can count on to keep a thread going or a forum going by ratcheting up peoples passions on the thread.

I don’t think that anything, any system, or any person in life can be made perfect or operate perfect.

I do think if we keep looking to ourselves to find solutions while we press others to look for solutions the world or that part of it or that thing does get better though.

My best advice friend is try to make it as better as you can by adapting to the extent you feel you can or is wise to yourself, while trying to get others including the staff to do the same.

I am my own worst and toughest critic in life, and try to always leave room and recognize there is room for me to get smarter, wiser, and more skilled.

You might want to consider challenging yourself a little, challenging the people you are finding it hard to get along with in a friendly way, and challenge the staff to try to do more and I would wager you would come up with a lot more satisfactory result taking that three prong approach than putting all your eggs in just one basket.

Some food for thought, happy posting!