Is the Way Above Top Secret material pulled off the Breaking/New Topic feed?

The reason I'm asking is because I had the strangest thing happen this afternoon.
A thread was started on some cops in Miami beating up a witness to a police shooting and taking the film. There was a link posted because the photographer of the shooting managed to save the cid chip in his mouth. Good thinking on his part.

I commented on the thread. The comment got a couple of stars and I went to add to my comment and edit, the thread vanished and was replaced with an error page saying I did not have access to this area.

Well since I was only attempting to edit my own post it was very befuddling. I found the thread in my recent posts for a few minutes, clicked on it but received the same error message.

Now I am wondering is there a separate forum for Way Above Top Secret Topics and how is it determined what is way above and what isn't?

Or are items taboo for the regular Joes pulled out of the live news feed and bumped to the Way Above Top Secret Forum?

Just curious because I think this happened to me once before only then I attributed the missing thread to senility and old age. Maybe I'm being too hard on myself.

I think they 404 threads like that because they involve a legal dispute

reply to post by here4awhile


Well I guess there may have been an ongoing investigation and that would explain why it might be removed entirely - but just moved to a different forum...and according to the "no access to this forum" message it wasn't removed altogether.

Also if that were the case and I am certain that it often is
doesn't that occur enough that ATS would have an automatically generated message saying something to the effect "the case in question here is still being investigated and the thread is removed to cooperate with the investigation?" Or something along those lines?

You would think.

Dont know, but half of the Drudge posts are here in minutes. The other half are from FARK
.

Originally posted by scooterstrats
Dont know, but half of the Drudge posts are here in minutes. The other half are from FARK
.

Sort of funny - I just noticed even this THREAD did not make it into the New Topic News feed.
Maybe because it is a board question and not exactly news? But I see new threads on Music popping up so still hard to figure out what is the formula or rationale at work?

Does the site have new owners by any chance?

reply to post by newcovenant


Here is your thing:

1. There is no "Way Above Top Secret" forum. Not that i know. There used to be RATS, but i think they unlocked it as it was a stupid idea to start with.

2. the "other forum" you can't view is the "admin forum" where mods discuss what action to take. You can only access it as a moderator.

3. the thread was likely 404'd due to being an active investigation. but who knows. That is one thing that REALLY pisses me off about ATS. it is a conspiracy site. For the love of God, be smart enough to let your conspiracy minded membership why a thread is tossed.

There are two forums for regular members that require special access. RATS (Really Above Top Secret) is one of them. You have to have at least 200 posts to access that forum. The other is the Alternative Substances forum. It also requires 200 posts or more. Both of those forums do not turn up on search engines, and thus they are allowed a little more latitude when discussing some things.

In all likelihood, the thread you were participating in was trashed. There are several forums that moderators work out of like complaints, alerts, and the trashbin.

If the thread was a repeat of another thread, and if it didn't have very many replies, then it could have just been trashed. Usually we close them and redirect to the existing thread, but perhaps it had other issues like a bad source, or too little commentary.

Anyhow, the subject of that cop video is still active, I saw a thread about it just a few minutes ago. Use the Search feature, or check the recent posts page, because the video is still under discussion.

reply to post by getreadyalready


Thanks for your reply. I wasn't really that concerned about it but wondering what happened to it. Since I have well over 200 posts I should be able to access the other two forums you mentioned. This is exactly the type answer I was looking for though. Thanks for solving the mystery!

reply to post by bigfatfurrytexan


Thanks for your answer too. It is true. I was looking for a way to give you a star but can't.
I'll catch up with you in another thread.