Has ATS changed much since you joined? In what way? Good or bad?

I don't actually know what I'm looking for to be honest. I found ATS looking for unusual stories, things that were unexplainable and mysterious - nothing in particular, really.

ATS appealed to me because you got a lot of ideas and input from people with a different take or perspective. It challenges your prejudices and forces you to think about things in ways you normally wouldn't. Sometimes we come looking at something with blinkers on, we miss things we simply can't or perhaps don't want to see. On ATS I get other takes on the subjects being discussed, bringing to my attention things that I was maybe ignorant to...I've definitely changed in some ways due to the time I've spent here, and see things differently and in a good way I think.

I dunno, I suppose I like to think I'm quite open minded and always wanting to learn. I'm happy to be shown that I'm wrong. Take the Madeleine McCann thread I referenced - I would have been happy for the image to be debunked using some reasoning - I find it difficult to conclude that it the image was definitely not her simply because the girl in the image looked about 8 as opposed to 12, the age Madeleine would be. I actually agree that the girl in the image looks very young, possibly younger than 12, but I'd never state in such a matter of fact fashion that to definitely be the case because I don't know for sure. But that's exactly what people did. I asked a number of other questions and made various other points in that thread...but everyone fixated on the age the girl "looked" and ignored the rest of the thread, when it was never just about the images and alleged sighting in the first place, that was just a small, interesting development in this huge, ongoing and very intriguing mystery.

If someone had shown me something to substantiate that claim - the girl was younger than 12, other than an opinion, something logical that made sense - I'd have been happy enough. It would have ruled it out, people seemed to assume I was making a claim instead of asking questions and looking for other perspectives. I also found it odd that I couldn't find the actual video footage the image was taken from, I think finding that would have given us a lot more to go on...but nobody seemed to care about that..she was about 8 therefore it was not her, I was either crazy or a troll and that was the end of it. that's not constructive and it's not the mentality of your average ATSer when I first came here.

I realise forming an opinion based on the supposed age the girl looked IS another perspective, but for me it's not really good enough, it's not conclusive or definitive, it's extremely easy to misjudge someone's age in person, seeing how they move, their mannerisms...even more so when you're looking at a young face in a still image. It's like scientists looking at the moon and going.."Well, we don't need to study it, it looks about...um, I'd say 3.6 billion years old, that's how old the moon looks!". I think if we saw the video the still was taken from, saw the girl move, her facial expressions, etc...we could have said with more accuracy what age she might have been. It would have been evidence either for or against...no evidence required, apparently.

For me, it's very difficult to guess the age of a young girl in a still photograph. I found it quite irritating, When I pointed out the girl in the image appeared about the same height as the bearded man standing next to her - nobody responded...instead continually posting saying...the girl in the image is too young. And that was that - worse still, the thread went nowhere. Meanwhile, the interesting case of the missing girl continues to develop on a regular basis.

I guess it's something nobody wants to talk about...well fair enough. Personally, I don't respond to threads regarding topics that don't concern or interest me. It got that bad I ended up squabbling in my own thread and being called a troll...they actually accused me of trolling. I've always been quite civil, only ever really losing my cool when people became rude or insulting...I resent that, being called a troll. I think I've made reasonably decent contributions to many threads in the past, I've never actively trolled any site. I especially wouldn't troll on a site I've frequented and become part of over a number of years.

But that's just one example of this sort of thing, ATS is now consumed by it more and more on a regular basis. I'm here to learn, I'm here to learn the things I believe are often wrong and the things I don't believe are often true. Nothing is absolute for me, yesterdays facts can quickly become tomorrow's myths.

I simply want to learn about the world and some of the odd things that happen, I always saw ATS as a tool for learning. Learning from people who were mostly free thinking and didn't seem so blinded by the very bigotry and closed mindedness that was the antithesis of what ATS stood for when I first started coming here.