Companion Website Idea

I realize this isn't the quite the right forum for this, but it is the forum I most frequent at ATS and tend to think could benefit from some of the ideas I wanted to present (so I won't be offended if the thread is moved). First, I realize that none of what I am presenting is new in concept, just that it might be a new combination of existing ideas (as many things are) that might prove practical. Second, my intention is not to offend anyone at ATS, as I don't think I could do a better job than they have done/are doing with the site.

I came up with a website idea a while back that I mulled over for a while before deciding that I didn't think it was pursuing at the time (it may not be, ever, hehe). I ended up not doing anything with the idea, but after reading pages of comments about a helicopter in a video that should have never even been in the thread I was reading to begin with, I figured it couldn't hurt to present the idea in case there are any concepts that people here think would be worth the time/effort to pursue.

I'm just going to paste the website proposal here, and a link to a concept image I made (I'm a programmer, not much of an artist, so bear with me), as I'm interested in everyone's relative thoughts/feedback.

I am interested in hearing ideas on why a site like this would be a bad idea (it would prob. be awfully hard to manage moderator rights, for ex.).

As you prob. know, I'm a pretty big fan of the website AboveTopSecret.com (ATS). You can check out the site if you aren't familiar with it, but the forums I check up on tend to focus around paranormal/hypothetical topics.

So let me give throw out some thought blurbs.

ATS is great. There is a community of people there who tend to be experts in different things (photo analysis, mapping, data collection. interviewing, etc.). The site feels a bit cluttered/cumbersome to me though. Sometimes, it's my opinion that certain aspects of ATS detract from the site's ability to be useful when genuine incidents happen. In Texas, within the last month, there was a sighting of what many people saw was potentially a giant craft. A number of very credible people saw this thing (police officer, respectable community members, etc.). So what usually happens on ATS is that someone will post a new forum thread, and everyone and there brother will come in an comment on this, that, and the other during the course of the thread (this is what forums are for). People link/drop in relative media, but this media tends to get lost in the ether amongst the pages and pages of forum posts. This causes a number of problems. It makes it very hard for new viewers to get to the meat and potatoes (typically media) related to case X quickly (people end up asking the same questions over and over, making the same conclusions as others, commenting on media that shouldn't have been placed in that thread to begin with, etc.). After a while threads go stale, and usually someone else will inevitably revitalize the topic, often in a new thread.

Check out this story which helped me come up with a more general, useful theme for the site I am proposing:
www.smh.com.au...

Some things struck me after reading this. Those people did not have an appropriate website to go to for this (i.e., when people want to search, they know to go to Google), and if a well-known site was available, the person who lost the camera would prob. have gotten in touch with the people who found it much more easily (their story seems to be newsworthy largely for the fact that they did manage to crack the case/find each other).

So... how does that relate to my previous thoughts. This proposed website could have a "Lost and Found" section (this is just one possible section under a larger umbrella theme) for cases that involve lost/found items as well as all of the associated evidence. It's very interesting reading about how the people were going over the photos with a fine-tooth comb for clues in this case -- this is exactly what often happens over at ATS (no surprise here, I guess).

Back to the companion website idea. Something along the lines of "mysterymatters.com" -- that's the best domain I've thought of atm but I really am not crazy about that name. "casecrackers.com", something in that vein...

People would simply register, upload an avatar pic, fill out the typical forum info. The idea would be that there would be categories for any type of mystery of mystery event. Instead of just simply being a forum, though, there would basically be the concept of a case (so that it can take on states like "Being Investigated", "Closed", "Proven Hoax", "Stale", etc.) A case would basically have one or more moderators (moderator tokens could be passed around the community and controlled by admins). A case moderator would be someone who can edit the "Information" and "Media" case attributes. The idea would be that forum threads about cases would exist, perhaps even discussing different things in (sub)threads tied to the case -- a case would be a representation appropriate for people to come up to speed with quickly (as opposed to having to read through tens of pages in a forum thread that might only contain a small set of known data/real information). [cont. below]

[edit on 3/15/08 by AkumaStreak]

Something that someone can think of as an organized set of known information and media related to cases. So if someone brings some new information or media to light in the forums, it can be added to the case.

Everything from "this person lost their camera, and these are the only pics we have", to UFO sightings, to general crime detective work could benefit from such a site.

Thoughts? Does this sound at all interesting to you?

Concept Image

[edit on 3/15/08 by AkumaStreak]

Oh -- another thing. I am a big fan of Wikis, and perhaps sites like TinWiki are already helping to solve some of the issues I have raised. I'm not sure if there is a need for any new sites at a level between ATS (countless/unorganized thread posts for incidents) and sites like TinWiki.

[edit on 3/15/08 by AkumaStreak]