The AboveTopSecret.com Community Should be Proud Today

reply to post by Majic


Same thing during the dorner case scenario. It was amazing. My entire family was watching the thread from my laptop.

In the light of a new day with the chaos of the manhunt behind us I would like to add this thought. For someone as old as I am it is a wonder.

Here I was, sitting in a chair in South Australia, listening to live scanner feeds form Boston, half a world away, effectively communicating with thousand of other like minded individuals, maintaining an up to the moment description of events in real time, so far in advance of what MSM could offer. AND, the whole record is stored for anyone that wants to peruse it at any time.

Bloody awesome when you think about it.

P

I know I personally didn't contribute much in the thread but I had the feeling like I was the uncle at a family function that just sits in a chair watching it all. I did feel that if we were all in the same room I would have brouht the scanner updaters some coffee or a bottle of water or something... even when some had full bladders. Sorry though. I couldn't go pee for you guys...

Thanks ATS'ers!

I almost had the people around me thinking I was psychic for a moment...

ME: They are gonna find the guy in a boat...
OTHERS AROUND ME: Pfft..
(20 minutes later)
TV: Breaking! They have the suspect surrounded in a boat!
OTHERS AROUND ME: (Collective gasp)
ME: Cheshire Grin and nod

In the end though I gave credit where credit is due... to ATS'ers who stayed well ahead of the game.

/deep bow

reply to post by pheonix358


While this is a little off topic, as one "old guy" to another, I know exactly how you feel.

I felt the same way back in 1991 or 1992 when the first webcams were available. I had a very small website set up for a few friends back in the late 1980's, one of whom was living on the Serengeti Plains in Africa, he sent me a video of zebras running across his backyard. I knew then the internet was something beyond what any of us thought it was at the moment.

I'll never forget that moment as long as I live.

Springer...

reply to post by pheonix358


Ok, so I am replying to my own post.

150 Years ago, I may of heard about this after a sailing ship sailed from the US to Australia with a copy of The Boston Times.

100 Years ago, I may have read a summary about it the next day after it was transmitted by Morse code.

50 Years ago I may have watched a summary in the 6.30 News on grainy black and white TV.

Today I felt like I was there, a part of the events, being able to comment in real time.

As I said, bloody amazing!

P

the fifth state is a central plank of democracy and freedom
thanks for letting us do what we believe is right Springer
Dan

I kept coming here to find new and pertinent information on the Boston situation. The MSM 24 news cycle format has shown itself to be woefully inept. Today my wife and I were watching Megyn Kelly on FNC and she quoted Eminem lyrics from the 2nd suspects twitter page as though these were the man's own thoughts. There was so little information their structure could find to fill the time, that they had little time to do any research. It was a hysterical and yet very sad spectacle.

Thank god for ATS.

This is probably one of, if not the best places to get news right away on the net. Some places have certain kinds of news but not a variety as ATS has. Maybe it is because of how long ATS has been around and the longtime experience of some of the members and mods. Sure there is some disinfo, that makes it interesting and helps teach everyone to be aware that what is thought to be true often is not.

To heck with our civil liberties, economy & wars waged, we're emo and happy, let's sing!

reply to post by tropic


If I lived in that neighborhood, the relief of the suspect finally being captured, alive no less, I'd be celebrating too. I see nothing wrong with that. People thanking the Police, who put their lives on the line, is also quite appropriate.

Being Patriotic, and expressing it after such a horrendous situation...nothing wrong with that in my book. It's not like they are burning down a Mosque you know. I see a fair representation of all Nationalities in the video.

IIRC, there were the same feelings being posted at the time of capture in the Scanner Thread.....

Des

I'm pretty proud of my fellow posters, too. I didn't expect such an admirable amount of self-restraint & civility for an event like this, I truly expected emotions to run high & mud to be slung at some point. I'm so happy the current 300+ pages of the thread are by far & wide mostly polite & sensible posts. If that's not proof to ourselves that we can be civil to each other during high-stress events, and proof to the non-CTs of the world that we're not all that nuts, I don't know what is.
Kudos everyone, keeping up to the minute on the manhunt wouldn't have been the same without you all

I can attest to the speed at which information was being supplied to the thread...breakneck speed would be the idle position in this case...this was at full throttle.

I know the chatroom isn't a favorite feature of all members but there came a point when I started all but begging folks in that thread. All in all I think it capped at 41 people with the tail end merging the ATS After Midnight regulars with the crowd that migrated from the thread as far as I could tell.

In my humble opinion...and not to take away from the forum aspect...but it was soooo much easier to keep up and effectively communicate. Moving forward and in the event there are other "events" that bring this amount of traffic I would just ask that members keep this great feature on ATS in the back of their minds.

It is with bottom of the heart sincerity that I express my thankfulness for every iota of this site and I consider ATS a staple in my life for the many facets of quality knowledge and entertainment that this site provides.

Thank you all...for everything each of you do.

I have been here a long time. I have seen multiple events bring people on this site to come together, but I still dont get how one person who used to say certain things isnt allowed back on or discussed.

I remember one thing this guy said and there were many who mocked him on this site who probably are no longer here:

1. There is an Atmosphere on the Moon

This one discussion rivaled the 9/11 thread at that time. He was proven correct. Not only that, there seems to be some type of atmosphere on other planets and moons as well in our Galaxy.

Anyway, besides that, great job on the Boston Bombing thread but to keep this site moving forward, outward minds need to be heard and kept being heard.

2cents = around .10 pennies since than.

What They Said

reply to post by UberL33t

The thread turned into de facto chat for literally hundreds of pages as members followed and posted breaking details, especially from the scanner streams. There's certainly a good argument for ATS Chat in cases like that.

But...

Not everyone likes chat, as you mentioned, some of us have JRE disabled for security reasons as well, and it's not a good medium for those who may want to review how and when things happened. There may well be some members who would like to comb through the details days, months, even years from now if they have questions or suspicions about what actually happened, and having the thread available makes that possible.

I don't hang out in chat myself (I'm all about persistent media), but know it is a very active community within our community and have no doubt today was something to remember there as well.

tl;dr version: It's aaaall good, baby.

reply to post by Majic


Point acknowledged...and I would agree wholeheartedly regarding the historical value of that thread or any thread for that matter. Luckily ATS has such a wide and diverse membership that I feel this will never be something the site will lack, which is inclusive of the many facets mentioned of why I love this website.

I do feel however that chat does create an avenue for real time involvement with members of the community and am actually surprised it doesn't get more use...I chalk it up to merely a lack of awareness or like you said because of the Java aspect and the unfortunate security issues that go with it. I may be speaking purely from a partiality standpoint on the matter though...I have been chatting in chatrooms since IRC was in its infancy. I think my first ICQ number was only 4 digits lol.

reply to post by Springer

Last night was an amazing time. I was following posts and the scanner all night. Incredible group of people we have on here. Proud to be a member of this community, at least till the Alphabets show up at my door...

Kudos indeed.

And for those who were active in the threads posting the updates, you need to know what you did.

This is an early-in-the-day snapshot of our Google Analytics Real-Time report, about 5 hours before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was caught in the boat:



On normal busy days, I've never seen the Currently Active Users number break 1,000.

As the crescendo of activity increased, about 20 minutes before the capture, the number was flirting with 6,500 -- that's on a short session of 3 seconds. We were also serving about 215 pages a second for the 10 minutes surrounding the time of capture.

The full analytics analysis of the hour of traffic leading up to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev's capture is this:
A total of 162,000 people were following the three primary Boston threads. They were following YOUR updates.

That's more traffic in one hour than ATS got in all of 2003. Because our members were a critical resource for 162,000 people during one of the most intense news days since 9/11.

Great job everyone.



One thing about that number... it's an estimate. Why? I was getting alerts from Google all day that our traffic was exceeding the ability of the Google Analytics platform to accurately count. They estimated that our numbers would be low by 35% and that we'd need to upgrade to the paid Google Analytics Premium so as to not loose data. I used a conservative 30% to extrapolate.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

One thing about that number... it's an estimate. Why? I was getting alerts from Google all day that our traffic was exceeding the ability of the Google Analytics platform to accurately count. They estimated that our numbers would be low by 35% and that we'd need to upgrade to the paid Google Analytics Premium so as to not loose data. I used a conservative 30% to extrapolate.

So the Great Google cannot keep up with ATS, well, not without a chunk of money!

Those are awesome figures and as some have said, "my whole family was gathered around my laptop." so those figures only represent the number of computers connected, not the number of people connected.

Many, many of those people would have been updating others in close proximity or via twitter or face boof.

(I'm leaving that typo in )

Honestly, I would suggest that 3 to 400,000 people received up to date information from ATS, one way or another.

Well done ATS.

P

This was the first thead that I've see go mental the way it did. At some points when I was posting a reply there were two pages on from when I clicked the reply button constant infomation and updates it was a pleasure to watch. I sat up till 1:30am UK time before I decided to go the bed (I had work at 5:30 am) and wasn't around for the final moment. But I sat at work yesterday all day not doing anything just listening and watching the thread I got no work competed at all so if I get fired I'm coming for you ATS haha

Nope all in all what a ride. Thank you all

EDIT: and a thank you to all admin staff on ATS thank you for making this happen

reply to post by SkepticOverlord
I am sure the Money will go to good use.