Is there a need for a dedicated conspiracy research website?

ATS, I feel there maybe a need for a dedicated investigation site where a group of interested folks can come together to investigate and research a (conspiracy?) topic.

A forum like ATS is a good idea for general investigations and general comments and can expose the topic very well to the search engines and high viewing numbers. However often the threads get drawn away from the main focus due to comments and side issues. Since any member of ATS can post on a thread, it also gets diluted by off-topics and flaming too.
A forum is rather like a coffee morning and a dedicated website is more like an enthusiasts meeting.

I was thinking of a more closed environment which, although everyone can read the thread, only those who are part of the investigation can make posts and add resources. It would also eliminate the general chit-chat which often waters-down the investigation.

So I would like your ideas and comments whether you think this idea is one worth persuing as a research/investigation website or not worth the bother.

The thoughts I have had along these lines are as follows, please add more comments and ideas of what would be useful. Obviously, not everything will get done, but the more important ones would likely get done first and then others added as the site was used and people found what they needed for their investigations. At the moment, if it is done, I see this as being a no-charge website.

Project 'owner' manages the project
Project pages viewable by all, editable by project members
Question-orientated investigation threads
BBcode forum-style text input method
Members can take page and resource copies to save on their own PC
Resource library of URLs and images uploaded from your PC
Up to 99 sub-projects on each main project
background Google daily/weekly searches extracting the URLs for review(similar to RSS news feed)

I would really like to get a discussion going on this subject.
Q

On edit:
If anyone would like to work with me to develop such a site, please contact me by private message. I can do the programming, so you could either provide ideas, guidance, testing, criticism, creative input etc or you can also help with the PHP programming too if that is your thing. :-)

reply to post by qmantoo


Ats has a research forum. You could try to get scholar ability and start a research group post there.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by qmantoo


That's why they have the Research Forum. You can only post there of you're a Scholar, and you are supposed to put together a team, with objectives for your research.

The type of conversation you are talking about, the real nitty-gritty get the facts can only happen in a person face to face meeting room style. A lot of stuff can be discussed on a forum and yes there will be trolls but if you want a true get down to business discussion I suggest bringing like minded people either from ats or where ever you find them into your living room in person and that is where the true change will happen. I'm not saying your idea is bad its great in fact but I just feel that to get a 'real' conversation going about a hot topic needs to be done in person. It's just how humans work.

The ATS research forum is great yes, and thats what it is supposed to be used for - research. It is still limited to a forum layout and I feel that there is so much more to an investigation or research than can be expressed properly in the traditional forum format.

A dedicated website for research could be tailored more towards the kind of research tools and features which an investigation may need. Storage of results and proper organisation.

The idea I have is to make investigations (" a project") start with a question or a statement and then all posts in that sub-thread move towards answering that question or providing more information to bring more clarity to that issue.

A project topic such as Michael Hastings would consist of many different questions which need to be investigated and answered and these can be divided amongst different people in the team with different threads addressing each issue all within the same 'project'.

I agree that the real answer to investigating anything can only be resolved by talking to people on the ground and doing legwork, but there are various aspects of investigation which can be done online. No-one is limiting the kind of investigations possible by having an online record. Some folks are more comfortable with talking to people and some folks are more comfortable digging out the snippits as related on the internet. Both avenues of investigation lead to a big picture which is what is needed to arrive at understanding the issue in greater depth.

Fukushima is an example where there is very little which can be done on-the-ground unless you speak Japanese and live in Japan, and I do see the benefit of talking to the workers at the plant. However, no-one is really doing that or else they are watched so carefully and sacked if they talk to the media. There is also useful research which can be done from afar by investigating the side issues and collecting facts about the nuclear reactor, the construction of the site, how radioactive elements decay and how they are blown in the wind, how to mitigate the effects, etc etc. There are also many articles which contain useful information published in English too.

It can be easy to forget that this is a conspiracy forum when most of the topics are about Obama and other US political topics ,not only that but you have springer banning topics on the holocaust and Elvis,maybe their are more topics off limits ? It's certainly put me off the site id rather go on 4chan where I'm free to say what I like.