After reading the recent "violent encounter with an alien" thread, i was left a little confused, indeed, the OP mentioned the RATS service, a
service i had never heard of before.
It apparently is designed for big time contributors to the site, some kind of exclusive lounge style board.
After having some replies to that thread deleted (I'll admit it, the OP put me on ignore and i got carried away...), I decided to U2U the moderator
responsible for the deletion.
Now, i know my post probably deserved to be deleted as after being put on ignore for just caring about the fact and questioning the OP's account, I
was sort of bitter and got carried away making fun of him which was completely off subject and thus deletable.
However, when i told the moderator that i found suspicious that the OP mentioned RATS so many times and that he was maybe working for ATS, to promote
the hitherto unknown service, I got a very aggressive answer from the moderator trying to show me that there are actually no benefits at all for ATS
to host this service and that they don't make money from it.
I was frustrated by the exchange and started to wonder about ATS not being the open debate haven it seemed to be but more of a subtly censored, goal
oriented deceiving machine....indeed if they could promote their services by using threads, what else could they promote or deny ?
I decided to look up ATS and see what Google would help me find....
It wasn't long before I found think particular link :
Above Top Secret Forum 'Outed' !! Scanning back to re-read the article posted at Laura Knight Jadczyk blog I found that it had been up-dated
with some really HOT new info regarding the deceit (which really appears to be Purposeful for the reason of dis-informing and mis-leading all of us)
at the Above Top Secret 'discussion' board and website.
I also noticed with the "Prophet yahwe " thread that some people here at ATS were giving a lot of credibility to ATS staff and particularly to
Springer, now, no disrespect but I am neither a a fanboy nor into personality cult and apart from being a guy running a business who seems to be
interested in alternative subject, I don't know anything about the man himself.
This brings me to the credibility paradox, as shown with the "violent alien encounter" thread the OP kept claiming that he was well known for his
threads that he wouldn't jeopardize his credibility by making up his story.
Now, I assume that some people might be out there thinking like me that he actually was making up the story and used his ATS cred to fool some people
into believing him.
Then why wouldn't the thread be closed for such blatant lies?
I have seen threads closed for less dramatic storied than his...
Could it be because this is a very fast growing thread and it probably bring a lot of traffic to the site and thus revenue or because it promotes RATS
which would bring revenue by getting people to be more involved with the site and again generate more revenue?
Please review this link for the quoted story, it is a long read but It might be worth it.
LINK
Let me know what you think.
(my apologies for the bad grammar, English is not my first language)