ATS - Red Herring District

The ATS Points system already allows for members to suffer a decrease through Warns, but plenty of capacity for incremental rise through Applauds and awards.

I do not see the positivity of such a new system as described. It would only cause more anger and personal upset on those who feel labelled incorrectly.

I've been on trash forums where we had applause and smites. People would applaud their friends and smite their enemies. It started off as light-hearted fun, but eventually factionism crept in and peoples' feelings started being hurt.

For myself, I found the smites to be just as interesting as the applause, if not more so. To me, it was all attention. And, just as there is no bad publicity, there is no bad attention on a forum -- at least you know people are reading what you wrote whether they agree or disagree.

But on a board like this, founded on mutual respect and not a free-for-all like some of the other places I've been, I think smiting would be too incendiary. It would create many more problems than it solves.

Id hate to see this idea die out. I understand that you guys dont like negative reinforcement, so what types of positive reinforcement can we consider? How do you reward somebody for not using shady misdirections? How do you make it compelling enough that the culprits will want to change their ways?

I think the problem is the the people that rely on these tactics cant use any other tactics, simply because they are wrong.

Karmic Retribution

I understand the appeal of "karma" and "peer moderation" systems and think they can work well under the right circumstances, but I'm very much opposed to them on ATS.

ATS isn't a community founded on social approval of member opinions.

It's okay to be different here, even to the point of being "disruptive" -- provided the "disruption" takes the form of offering points of view that other members may not be comfortable with, rather than violating the rules of membership.

I've used quotation marks around the word "disruption" in this case because on ATS the only true form disruption can take involves T&C violations.

The ATS staff is prohibited from taking any action against any member which is not clearly justified by the T&C.

"Karma" systems are not subject to such restrictions and are therefore typically used to encourage conformity and stifle dissent.

Such systems, by their very nature, are incompatible with the values of a community which promotes independent thought.

The rules governing our membership are not perfect, but they have been refined over time and work very well when they are followed.

Without exception, every example of genuine disruption I've seen in over two and a half years on ATS has been effectively resolved by applying the terms & conditions.

How To Throw Back Red Herrings

Though it's not possible to prevent members in good standing from posting "red herrings" and derailing threads, it is possible to respond quickly to such disruptions and minimize their impact.

It is also possible to prevent members who repeatedly violate the T&C from posting in the first place, but we try to reserve that sort of action for cases where all reasonable alternatives have been exhausted.

The moderator staff is here to help members and promote candid, civil topical discussion, but doing so would be impossible without the cooperation and assistance of the community as a whole.

To that end, all members can help. All you need to do is:

1. Honor the AboveTopSecret.com Terms And Conditions Of Use. Read (or at least skim through) them now and then. They are the laws of our land.

2. Stay on topic, even if other members digress. Disruptors can't drive a thread off topic if no one takes the bait.

3. Be courteous, especially when others are not. When a member flies off the handle and starts hurling insults, compounding the problem by following suit only makes things exponentially worse. Take the high road and don't get dragged into the mud. Instead...

4. Notify the staff when there are problems. Disruptors can't disrupt anything if they can't post. Members who repeatedly violate the rules forfeit the privilege of posting to our forums. Want revenge? Report violations.

The staff won't take any action that isn't justified by the evidence and the T&C, but the nature of discussion forums is such that when the evidence is there, it is irrefutable.

Those who habitually disrupt topical discussion convict themselves with their own words.

Working The System

I'm not suggesting that changes to the way we do things would necessarily be wrong or are out of the question. There is always room for improvement.

However, I've seen this process work far too many times to agree that experimental changes with a debatable track record in other venues should take precedence over doing what I know works.

My advice to any member who is unsatisfied with the current system of moderation is to try the suggestions I've offered here before dismissing them as ineffective, and to be patient when doing so.

After all, even the most ingenious "karma" system wouldn't solve every problem overnight.

I was just trying to kick around some ideas of how to curb Red Herring Artistry without the members having to constantly complain or the ATS staff having to constantly police this phenomena.


One of my other ideas was a dedicated deflection thread.
www.abovetopsecret.com...
I'll be using it, and I welcome others to as well. It might me helpful having sticky's like it for hot topic forums, but you may have to do one for each 'party' in these hotter topics as if one is skewed like mine already is it may not work well for getting the 'loser' team to use it.


Another approach could be to have or fix "resource threads" that link in the bigger threads on the issue slike 911 that always see new threads on the same material. The 911 forum has one, but the link code is messed up on all of the links and noone responded awhile back when I asked what happened.

Just my 3 cents.