Yep, getting pretty tired of the way things are being run here.

You're encouraged to report posts where you're being personally attacked, then you get punished, too. Not only this, but these trolls get their friends to star their posts. This is blatant gang activity and is transparent. Especially when you can go onto one of these member's profile and see one of their cronies have boasted about how they have made a post on a thread to help push their agenda.

I think the darkness is prevailing on ATS and it just may be time to let them run it. If the mods don't start regulating things better and not allowing these nasty trolls to have their way, this entire website is going to go down the drain.

Also, you should be allowed to defend yourself against these members. There should be no reason a defensive post is removed especially when it is related to the topic and the language is as polite as possible.

I realize you've only been here 6 weeks so you probably haven't seen other threads asking about something similar. Most people do NOT want an up/down system like that. It leads to group think. It leads to an echo chamber.

People give stars here to others who agree with them .. not based on content at all.
It's not the way it should be. I'd love to see the stars go away all together.