Important Update to the Terms & Conditions coming soon...

You quoted the statment of the problem that sparked this action.

Then the resolution is clearly focused on the "organized disruption of any ATS topic by any apparently organized group of members". That's clearly not focus on any mason-centric topics.

I've been very clear that these actions are inspired by a group of masons, but the result is across all ATS/BTS/PTS forums.

My last post. Maybe for good, maybe for a few months. All I know right now is that I need a break from some of the crap that is flying around here.

The issue here isn't about ganging up. It's about making scapegoats.

This whole thing started getting out of hand when a guy was caught red handed lying. He had previously stated that he had been drugged, brainwashed, you name it, by Masons. This was later recounted by Masons on the board and he out and out denied his own claims and called his detractors liars in very strong terms. His own words were then reposted. Not one quote. Not two. But many - all repeating his claims that he had just denied ever stating. There is no issue over the fact that this guy lied. It's not open to question. It's not a conspiracy. he was caught utterly and totally with his hand in the cookie jar. White is not black here.

So what happened next? Was this guy flamed from the board? Was he penalised by the moderators? Nope. A couple of guys laughed at him. They didn't tear him a new asshole, they didn't flame him, they didn't ask for him to be banned - they merely made jokes about his lies. I was one of those people and I recieved a penalty for doing so.

I then posted about how I felt that this was unjust and was merely met with sarcastic repiles from a moderator. Meanwhile, the liar gets of scot-free and is made a martyr and a victim of the evil Freemasons.

Now, I'm not limited to the SS forum. I post everywhere. And I know for a fact that in another forum, this issue would have been dealt with differently. If it was the Religon forum, he'd have had half a dozen fundamentalists jumping down his throat (and not humourously), if it was the UFO forum he'd have been rebutted by the UFOlogists, in the Politics forum he would have got a complete and utter butt kicking. But in the SS forum? Nope. He's the martyr and the excuse for the mods to come down on the Freemasons posting there. Of course, we can hide behind wordplay with the meaning in the U2U, but to me it is pretty clear. Truth doesn't make a conspiracy and therefore it has no place in the SS forum.

It's easy to say "we don't like organised ass-kicking". But when five guys are telling the Truth it doesn't mean that it is "organised". The answers look the same and therefore one can't help but question. Truth only ever gives you one answer. It doesn't mean to say that it is organised though - no more than five Christians in the Religious forum, five Republicans in the Politics forum and so on.

I honestly believe that the ATS motto is now not worth a fig. We are no longer Denying Ignorance here. We may claim to do so and we may use the excuse of fairness and courtesy to back up our mission statement, but when you tie the hand of one party in the argument, you stifle that side - you will only ever see the one side, correct or in error. That doesn't just stand true of the SS forum, but any forum on ATS. Denying Ignorance is about hearing both sides - wether you disagree with one or the other - it must be heard. One can complain that there is a lot of trash talking coming from one argument but if one completely ignores that side, it's possible to miss that grain of Truth.

OK I take your point , but I was challenging the accusation that I was miss understanding or deviating the thread. I am not.

The link to those quote is in the original post here, therfore it forms the basis on the original post.

I would defend the point if it were 'train spotters' the fact that it refers to freemasons is not that much. No group should be bullied or threatened by any means, I include Freemasons if they are doing the bullying.

I stopped going to threads about freemasons (a subject i have interest in) almost as soon as i joined ATS simply because of the 'problem'.

i applaud the decision mentioned by the thread-starter .

also i say thank you to thematrix, bcause i'm very reluctant to talk about UFO experiences i've (imagine?) had, which i believe may add t discussion, because of the attacks. ufos were the reason i joined ATS and i hope to be able to participate more thoroughly rather than just dipping my toes in as i have.

Originally posted by Leveller
I honestly believe that the ATS motto is now not worth a fig. We are no longer Denying Ignorance here.

Judging by the overall member response, there is very small minority that is disappointed with this new minor policy shift.

I have no knowledge or experience with the incident you've related. This is a massive discussion board, it's virtually impossible for senior staff to remain appraised of all such incidents.

It seems that, tediously, this point is getting blown out of proportion. How many times can it be made more clear?

One group (Masons so far) ganged up and disrupted several topics.

Because of that we are now forced to watch for such activity.

To ensure that ATS remains an open and collaborative destination to deny ignorance we will be more cognizant of what appears to be organized thread hijacking.

It's happened in the past with white supremacist idiots, and we moved quickly and banned the lot.

This time, it happened with Masons, wasn't as distasteful, so we defined a policy and broadcast a warning.

This policy would apply to
- An organized conservative group disrupting threads
- An organized liberal group disrupting threads
- An organized anarchist group disrupting threads
- Any organized political group disrupting threads
- An organized racist group disrupting threads
- An group of pacifists disrupting threads
- and so on...

Perhaps we should have had this in place sooner, but we didn't and now we do.

Open, fair, honest, and collaborative discussions are our top priority here. This policy (along with others) will help clarify for members and staff what we will do to keep it that way.

I am shocked by this!

So, only members that have a view that "fits" will be allowed to speak on this board?! Groupthink! Many members are just spreading lies about Freemasonry on this board. Their are some very vocial members that were trying to counter this flood of lies.

What is wrong with this? If the posters points are vaid let their arguments speak for themselves, do we really need to ban people just because they don't think the Freemasons are "out to get us".

I am not a Freemason; for the record.

-- Boat

Originally posted by Boatphone
So, only members that have a view that "fits" will be allowed to speak on this board?!

Did you even read the post just before yours?

I'm not even sure whether this falls under 'stupid' or 'impractical'. Not to malign the mods, but...why? This seems to be a remarkably poor policy decision.

We have kamikaze pacifists who attack self-defence advocates every time we talk about concealed carry or whatnot. We have liberals maligning conservatives. Athiests assaulting religious types. In each case, we have 'organized groups' of posters 'disrupting a thread'. In 90% of cases, everyone treats it like a bump in the road, keeps on going without the moddery so much as noticing. Case in point, a very quaint conversation, a request for advice.

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Bottom of the first page, we have a kamikaze.

Obvious

Ban all guns except for Police and Forces.
Get a dog that barks a lot.
No one gets killed.
How easy can it be.
I seriously dont envy you guys in America having gun weilding idiots roaming the streets.
Complete ban - the only way forward.

There is an 'organized disruption' when everyone participating (and a few others) open up on this guy and tell him to shut up. Similarly, whenever certain members post about anything...Souljah, Archangel, and Edsinger come immediately to mind... there is almost immediately an effort to refute or 'disrupt' their thread. This is all tolerated.

The masons, however, seem to be stuck, as they are villified. They band together to defend themselves (albeit poorly, as that poor banned fellow was quite an ass) against a vast number of slandering threads. It appears that any attempt to refute the view that all masons are babyeating Satanists is an 'organized disruption of a thread'.

As I have said, I believe this to be a poor move in policy, but I can do nothing about it save that hope the mods come around and see the folly in it.

DE

OK - not everyone likes the new policy. I can appreciate that... really, I can.

I'm not saying I agree with everything thats been said on this thread, but I see a loss of perspective developing.

Irrespective of how this policy shift came about, I am certain that, if applied fairly and equally across the whole board, as well as SS, the board will be a better place.

Whats the issue? Enough already. Senrak went too far and got made an example of. Leveller has been extremely hard done by. It's done. Over.

Lets move on...

I honestly believe that the ATS motto is now not worth a fig. We are no longer Denying Ignorance here.

Who's we?

Man how I loathe people who log onto someone else's private BBS/website and then complain about what they find there.

Here's a tip: Go get your own servers. Go build up your own base of users over years of time. Go manage a board of 10,000 regular posters and let us know how quickly it degrades into the sort of average crap one finds all over the web. ...Now I haven't done this either, but at least I have enough sense to know when I'm a guest.

ATS has a strong core of people who run it and make it a nice place to participate in group discussion. You couldn't be more wrong about the motto. In fact, since every Mason seems to believe that their group is sparkling clean, I think this move will probably remove some of the latent ignorance at ATS.

I'm laughing as I remember the threads about how ATS is secretly run by Masons. I guess you just cannot win sometimes.



"What we got here, is failure to communicate."




[edit on 5-12-2005 by smallpeeps]

Maybe I should mosey on over to the SS section and jump into the fray (Masonry=Religion).

I know I can be a bit vocal (some people say bullheaded) about what I believe. I just try not to insult anyone. Insults do no good and only serve to make you look less credible and more like an idiot.

When people resort to character attacks, that makes them look less credible IMO. If you have an issue with the message that's being presented, focus on the message and not the person giving it. Say why you think the information is true or false, and it's really helpful if you have information to back this.

Here on ATS I can agree with another member on one issue, and totally disagree with that same person on another issue. I have nothing against that person, just some of the ideology. Neo-cons think I'm a liberal because I'm against the Iraq war, for example, and liberals think I'm a Bushbot because of my conservative beliefs. (For the record I'm a Constitution Party member--I jumped the GOP ship some time ago.)

At any rate, just remember the Golden Rule--do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.

Originally posted by Leveller
There is no issue over the fact that this guy lied. It's not open to question. It's not a conspiracy. he was caught utterly and totally with his hand in the cookie jar. White is not black here.

So what happened next? Was this guy flamed from the board? Was he penalised by the moderators? Nope. A couple of guys laughed at him. They didn't tear him a new asshole, they didn't flame him, they didn't ask for him to be banned - they merely made jokes about his lies. I was one of those people and I recieved a penalty for doing so.

Yeah you guys are so prefect, you all would never lie would you, you’re all truth 100% of the time. Just like the time that I mentioned that I was asked by a future relative to join the masons, and got attacked by a group of you guys that I was a huge liar and it was against the rules for a mason to ask someone to join. Yet throughout other threads you all decided to go a head and admit that not only does this happen, but that there have people that were forced to join. I will find these threads if need be (I hate to use the search function) to show that I am not making this up…

Originally posted by Leveller
It's easy to say "we don't like organised ass-kicking". But when five guys are telling the Truth it doesn't mean that it is "organised". The answers look the same and therefore one can't help but question. Truth only ever gives you one answer. It doesn't mean to say that it is organised though - no more than five Christians in the Religious forum, five Republicans in the Politics forum and so on.

Nevertheless, the truth is in the eye of the beholder on this subject. You can tell me that to a monkey a pentagram is a symbol of good fortune, but from my perspective (not being a monkey) a pentagram is a pentagram; period…

Since Masonry is rife with stuff that involves religion (tubal-cain, e.g.), and the occult (blue-silver, eastern star, e.g.), you cannot act as if only what you guys say is the truth. There is just as much truth in the Christian perspective of this, but you all slam those that look at it from the other perspective, and often without so much as an explanation to the person that is being made fun of. YOU KNOW THAT IS THE TRUTH!

Lets be bluntly honest here, you guys are willing to defend your fraternity to such a point that you will bend the truth in your own minds and accept whatever makes you feel right in your decisions to do what most religions excommunicate people for. So don’t act as you are the only holders of truth on the subject, there is just as much truth from the other side, but from a more objective perspective. Of course, you all don’t like those answers, hence the personal attacks…

Originally posted by DeusEx
www.abovetopsecret.com...

Bottom of the first page, we have a kamikaze.

I would hope that you see the difference between this post and what went on in the mason threads. It would be more like if there were 10 of these “Kamikaze” guys and they would jump on, insult, grammatically pick apart, post picture jokes about, everyone of the opposite opinion.

Now I must admit that they have not all been like that, and some of the guys that attacked me at first did lighten up after a while, and I did actually learn a lot from the guys like ML, but please you are talking about apples and oranges here folks.



[edit on 12/5/2005 by defcon5]

Honestly people, we now have 4 pages of posts in this thread, half of which are from people who are taking this thing COMPLETELY the wrong way and blowing it totally out of proportion!
This is a movement to prevent trolling on the boards, an addition to the T&C, in an effort to make ATS a better place. The staff does these things to make this board a better place for YOU, and your going to go and complain about their additions?
Again i will say, this is NOT an incident of the staff ganging up on people , it is simply an effort to prevent people from posting ugliness and such towards other members.
Not only does this useless drivel not contribute to the discussion at hand, but it dissuades people from visiting those forums. Secret Societies could really be a great forum, but there were groups of people who got together and ruined thread after thread after thread.

The staff are not evil, ignorant, or prejudiced hell-demons, please stop trying to make them look like it.

Forgive me for being redundant, I just feel like we can't stress enough that people are taking this the wrong way, this frustrates me.

--Kit.

[edit on 5/12/2005 by Kitsunegari]

Not-So-Secret Societies

Insulting members, repeatedly violating the terms and conditions of this board and carrying on like a troll organization is NOT defense of Freemasonry.

It's trollery, plain and simple, and the owners of this board have stated repeatedly and in no uncertain terms that it will not be tolerated.

Misrepresenting what the owners have plainly stated does NOT garner sympathy or make a credible case against them.

Nothing the site administrators have posted in any way so much as suggests that individual members cannot post their individual opinions to this board.

As the staff has made painstakingly clear, any member -- Mason or otherwise -- is free to express their opinions in any manner they see fit, within the limitations of the AboveTopSecret.com Terms And Conditions Of Use, including Term 13.

What is explicitly NOT welcome are organized and deliberate disruptions of discussion by groups of members pushing agendas -- regardless of what they may be.

Members who are truly unable to understand the distinction may well be unsuited for ATS.

Yes, there are people who post nonsense about Freemasonry on ATS. Ironically, many of them call themselves “Masons”.

There is nothing wrong with members who are Masons posting what they consider to be the truth about Freemasonry.

However, any member who is unable to tolerate the fact that other members are similarly free to post what they see as the truth about Freemasonry is in the wrong place.

The insistence of some members on some sort of fictitious “right” to disrupt ATS -- and in particular insulting and twisting the words of staff members -- only serves to reinforce my opinion that this action was not only necessary, but overdue.

We may know a tree by the fruit it bears.

Some who call themselves “Masons” discredit the reputation of Freemasonry by sowing seeds of bitterness where they might otherwise cultivate friendship.

I recommend a more enlightened path.

Those members who are Masons and are also willing to tolerate differing opinions and ideas are always welcome on ATS.

Anyone who would suggest otherwise is a damn liar.

I just read my U2U and thought that this one was a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I have no experience of the particular forum in question, so I did not witness any of it. and I will not be going there to look for myself.

A few points from me:

I too only go to one or two boards here, I go to cryptozoo and ancient civilisations, I have briefly posted a few posts in UFO and 9/11 conspiracy.
So I can entirely understand why someone would limit their actions to one forum, so what, that's all that interests them.

Insulting other members is already a violation of T&C's so if this was the problem there was no need for a new rule.

If the problem is that the masons stand up and tell their side of the story....well I can't see the problem...You put your arguement, they say "not true" you agree to differ, unless someone offers proof of one side of the arguement.

To say that Masons who collaborate with each other to put across their arguements will be banned, is imo going to hinder a two sided debate. And the "management" will be the ones to decide if collaboration has taken place. Sounds to me like the sort of paranoid steps that would be taken by countries like China or Zimbabwe to help ensure it's citizens are fairly represented in the government.

No, I am not a Mason.

Geez, tough decisions are never popular.
Newbie here who still gets lost on ATS (and not often enough).
I read the post that resulted in the banishment and I have to say (for what it's worth) it did seemed justified.
I just bought my first Daviv Icke book (loved the ATS interview.....which is how I came about buying the book).
Keep up the good work....and the tough decisions.

the participation of overt masons has become a disruption

well if that isnt blatant discrimination i dont know what is.

they start defending themselves en masse from the many lies that people consider valid conspiracy and get targeted in response and shut up like this.

well isnt that nice....

I'm pretty much resolved in this issue, but wanted to add another perspective if I may. I think the problem is not with the action taken, but rather the wording or explanation in the U2U. I'm not a newspaper editor and understand we're all human, so let's just accept for a moment that we all have our opportunities for improvement. What I've learned from this thread, is it was not the fact that they were Masons that they were booted, but the fact that they were harassing and condemning people who had anything to say that was Anti-Mason. If I'm wrong, please correct me. Now, the U2U seemed to place heavy emphasis that they were Mason, when the emphasis should have been that there was a violation of the terms and conditions. I'd even go as far to say that being Mason is irrelevant to the situation and therefore is not deeming mention, other than to say "there have been some people on the Secret Society forums who..."

Example:

"A man of african-american decent was shot in a downtown liquor store in the Bronx."

vs.

"A businessman was shot in a Wines and Spirits establishment in New York City just hours before he was to attend his daughter's wedding."

Is there a difference between these two statements?

[edit on 23-12-2005 by saint4God]

But they already have rules about behaviour and respecting other users, so why the need for new rule? I don't get it.

Mucho THANKS!!!
This part of the forum seems at the least sexist and at the most exclusionary.