Petition for rational/reason/logic on the board

I like ATS a lot, I always have.

Sure there have been the way out there posts now and then, but when you get a board that has Aliens, Politics, Whichcraft & Religion (plus more) you are bound to get some really wierd stuff.

That said however I feel that lately we are seeing posts and members that go above and beyond the normally accepted strangness.

I see daily entries of total and utter nonsense.
I see copycat posts within hours of an original post EG I attacked an alien to be followed later by An alien attacked me by another member.

I feel we need a way to qualify members standing and in particular with a certain topic. For example Internos' comments on moon stuff is very well respected as he/she goes through the process of working out what it is they are presenting and then can back it up.

I do not know how to resolve the issue other than maybe make people select or earn their specialty as voted by their peers, and also have a star system that allows members to earn a negative point. That way gauranteeing less crap on the board or at least when you see a post saying: I AM A GREY and the member has -12000 credibility points you may or may not even care to look.

Of course your Foes cannot vote against you, and in turn your friends votes are only 50% of a non-friend vote.

Let me know what you think.
Sign the petition if you agree with a:

/agree

Lets see where this gets us.

[edit on 9-7-2008 by smans]

I see where you're heading with this. I suppose it is theoretically possible to establish some kind of self-policing rating system - but is it possible to do so without the possibility of abuse?

I know there are some cases (mostly extreme) where we would like to see some thread or other removed because it is a waste of time - but heck, if you were to examine my threads, most people would probably call them a waste of time. It depends on what you're interested in.

I guess something along the lines of what you're suggesting could be worked out - but do you see a consensus of willing moderators in this vein? Without them and their support I don't know that your suggestion is going to get any traction, so to speak.

I understand what you mean, and I think your intentions are good. But I don't agree with your idea - I personally never judge a post, comment or thread by how many points the poster has. An informative and interesting thread/post that makes me a little less ignorant, is a good one no matter how many or how few points the OP has.

And your method implies that people would always vote "intelligent" and give negative points to obvious BS. A recent and very popular thread about an alien encounter proves that it doesn't work that way. This particular thread got a huge amount of replies, stars and flags. I will not name the thread and the OP here, but if you don't know which thread I am talking about, you can send me an U2U and I will tell you.

Here at ATS people just have to think for themselves in order to separate the BS from the excellent contributions that many members provide.

reply to post by ziggystar60


Yes, but for example, if that OP had a high point rating from his peers in his field, then you would see it. Lets look at it like this:

Current post:
UFO

User status:
Paranormal: 10
UFO: 700
Survival: 200
Religion: -200
Politics: -40
Conspiracies: 30

Then you will see where his expertise, or peer respectability lies.
As something like Whitchcraft would be hard to factually verify, however peers in the area could rate your input and therefore people with a knowledge and interest in the post topic can add to your point rating.