content control and thread promotion on ATS : 100% distraction

I also find very enjoyable to read some esoteric # on this forum. Some people are really hilarious with their religious doomsday bull#.

Oh God. Stop whinging will you. This is ATS. All sorts of weird and wonderful stuff appears on here.
If this was a serious place it would be different, but 'freedom' of the press makes it what it is.... pointless but fun.

Originally posted by IPILYA
reply to post by SaturnFX

 

Or how about stars cost 10 ATS points and flags cost 20?

I suspect what would happen is that one portion of the ATS community would become dominant and suppress all the other content, at the expense of losing members. People don't stick around if the system appears rigged against them.

It's hard to predict whether you'd get a whole pile of science types on here with strict naturalistic viewpoints or whether you'd end up with more emotive or conspiratorial thinkers or perhaps really hard core conspiracy researchers or regligious people. The fact that something like "I am a scientist" gets to the front page might suggest that it is not the people that you think who would end up hogging the place.

Personally I tire of threads that go:

Absolute 100% SOLID PROOF of [insert ridiculous nonsense here].

Licking of lips. Oh thank you sir, star and flag for you.

Nice post, keep em coming, S&F.

This should be promoted so it gets more attention from some more knowledgeable people. S&F.

Giving this a late afternoon bump.

I'm sitting on the side with this one and definitely gonna watch it and see how it pans out.

.....

Five pages go by......

Hey, did anyone actually check whether any of the claims of the OP are even possible? I just looked up blah, and it's total nonsense.

....

27 pages later

Something has changed lately and I just know that Elenin is a dwarf star and Nibiru is rising on the astral plane and Nasa is hiding the truth from everyone cause the earth is hollow and that's why the OP's post about contraception and AIDS is right.

-----

But you know, each to his own. One man's nonsense is another man's reality on ATS.

Originally posted by daggyz
Oh God. Stop whinging will you. This is ATS. All sorts of weird and wonderful stuff appears on here.
If this was a serious place it would be different, but 'freedom' of the press makes it what it is.... pointless but fun.

I think the whinging is because at one point in time, long, long ago, ATS actually was supposed to be a serious place for seriously discussing topics that people seriously felt were being kept secret by various powerful people. (The government, Illuminati, etc.)

Although at this point, you are right, its mostly pointless fun.

reply to post by XmikaX


It is because this site is now controlled by the very people we are trying to expose.

Originally posted by TheEndisNigh
reply to post by XmikaX

 

It is because this site is now controlled by the very people we are trying to expose.

reply to post by Blaine91555


Bravo!

I love it when you're mad.

I've noticed that a decent thread can totally disappear from the ATS live page whilst a crap one will linger on. Even if the juicy thread has more flags and or replies etc.  
 
This really annoys me as I feel it doesn't get maximum exposure. I'm not talking about my threads as I very rarely post any. 

I would have a hard time believing that they are manually removed from the live page but who knows stranger things have happened. 

Just my 2 Kenneth  

If you find the idea of flags and stars annoying, then why don't you just ignore them? Why, why why?
Don't flag. Don't star. Don't consider the flags when you open a thread. . Don't pick up your threads off the "recent posts" page. Go to the forums, or your friends lists, or firehose. There's plenty of ways to live at ATS without adhering to the flag/star system.

I personally do both liberally, as it strikes me, but that's just me.

To be honest, all this complaining about stars and flags seems a little like sour grapes.

We've said it countless of times, and it seems we need to continue saying it over-and-over, just to stem the tide (not eliminate) of those who assume "someone" at "ATS" is "controlling" the content.

The site is programmed in such a way that even I, the person who programmed it, cannot dictate which topics appear where on all the pages that aggregate the top-flagged and most-replied threads. For example, these pages:
Site Home
Top Topics (most-flagged)
Hot Topics (most-replied)
30-day Overview (most-flagged & most-replied)
ATS Real-Time (time-sensitive new threads)

DISCLAIMER: However, there have been rare occasions where an extremely important thread/topic was hard-coded into one of the top-two positions on the site home -- typically because of very hot thread (such as the Japan earthquake) or a sponsored thread as a companion to an ad campaign (such as the werewolf topic not long ago). But in the handful of these cases, we made it clear what was happening.


That being said, we (staff) have from time to time discussed the issues members raise about flagging on ATS, and the occasional topic that receives a high amount of flags, which then turns out to be not what everyone expected -- such as the recent "I am a scientist" hoax.

The flagging system is intended to provide our members with a rather significant tool to "crowd source" the editorial management of topics on ATS. With that "members in control" intent in mind, we (ATS staff and management) would never consider inappropriately subverting or otherwise influencing the system.

However, we (staff) do realize ATS has experienced some rather significant evolution since the flagging system was first introduced, and we often discuss possible alterations. Since the core ideal is to ensure our members only flag that which is important to them, change is often resisted. But, it's being discussed again and the possibility of refinement is on the table. I can't promise what form it might take, or if there will be any change at all -- only that we recognize some of the concerns and are considering potential alterations.

Stay tuned.

I guess the topic is ATS screening content. Then prove it. Flag three topics in the right hand column and a star for each and if those dont move into the center column of the new topics and you have printscreens of each step of the process then you have evidence for a grievance against a private owned public site that can do anything they please because they pay the bills.

There is always GLP but the lightweights have to hang here because they get eaten alive in the shark tank.


Reminds me of the bumper sticker on the back of my dads station wagon (first year ever made) : America, Love it or Leave it.

a lot of the replies don't get the point of the thread, why is that ?

drowning the fish about how the content can be easily controlled by ats staff and/or sockpuppets ?

i don't care about the scientist i care about ATS openly promoting this thread with this moving forum things (to make it more visible as a matter of fact)

why did this happen ? nobody answered...

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord
It's automatic, based on flags and date -- the two highest flagged threads initiated in the previous 36 hours are automatically shown at the top of the site home. "ATS management" has no input on the matter.

don't be ridiculous everybody understand how the sql queries works;

but it seems at least 60+ members don't understand the policy of the human intervention, of the staff in moving threads around so that, a stupid useless thread like "i am a scientist" get more visibility.

so why this pushing up ? good for advertising ? is that all ?

beside that it doesn't require much coordination (from within) to make sure a thread end up on home page, not even mentioning the sockpuppet;
then for those sockppuppet equally easy, since just one guy can run 20 of them...

even if you're clean on the "asking mod to flag a thread" which we will never know because if you do you will deny anyway, your flag system is dead man because of the sockpuppets

The members, as described above.

oh so you consider the sockpuppets as members too ? unless you consider everybody to being just vulgar ad revenue generator ?

so maybe you should consider that the persona management software probably block any ads or external script for better efficiency and less memory usage. would that help in making you work on this problem or you still consider it is really not your problem ?

"Move to hide?" Explain what you believe is described in "countless threads."

91000 results +

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/552f8af8b159.png[/atsimg]

as for the official reason contents that your advertisers don't like

So you're advocating some kind of coup such that a small group of self-appointed content police have exclusive discretion of which topics are worthy of remaining available?

see my signature lol

reply to post by XmikaX


LOL Seems like Mr Scientist really ruffled some feathers. Good for him. Go ahead and call me names. I wont be around to respond. Gotta go to work.

HaHaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Originally posted by ladyinwaiting
If you find the idea of flags and stars annoying, then why don't you just ignore them? Why, why why?
Don't flag. Don't star. Don't consider the flags when you open a thread. . Don't pick up your threads off the "recent posts" page. Go to the forums, or your friends lists, or firehose. There's plenty of ways to live at ATS without adhering to the flag/star system.

I personally do both liberally, as it strikes me, but that's just me.

To be honest, all this complaining about stars and flags seems a little like sour grapes.

edit on 6/27/2011 by ladyinwaiting because: Actually, it seems a LOT like sour grapes. Get over it.

the complaining is about the MOVING AROUND FOR MORE EXPOSURE AS IT DID HAPPEN FREQUENTLY ON USELESS THREADS

it's not about me, it's about the majority of the traffic that are lurkers : they don't do these things. unless maybe if we tell them that they cannot trust the flag system.

the majority of the traffic follow the flag system, the majority of the traffic read the threads they are "told to to read"

& this very thread here where we are telling them to change their habit of visiting this ats website was removed from the home page (although it has more flags than the threads currently on homepage lol)

content control : YES by the staff AND the sockpuppets & if we are aware of it most of the traffic is not and that is wrong

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

The flagging system is intended to provide our members with a rather significant tool to "crowd source" the editorial management of topics on ATS. With that "members in control" intent in mind, we (ATS staff and management) would never consider inappropriately subverting or otherwise influencing the system.

As you are the owner, I'm sure you've seen how ATS picks apart every detail on whatever's happening in the world at any given time, so I'm sure you can understand how people, including myself, question why there's not a single thread that's made it to the front page on what's going on in the Middle East, or what's happening in our own countries.. It seems to be the general consensus around here that what NATO and the U.S. are doing over there is not about democracy, so it just seems odd nothing's made it. It also seems like there's been triple the amount of spam this year.

This is the largest conspiracy related forum on the internet, so you kind of have to expect questions and doubts. If you and your staff are really with us then you should try fixing some of these problems.

Also, I reported this thread when it first made it to the front page, because attacking the banks instead of the people in charge will do nothing but collapse our economy. It was removed for a while but was mysteriously put up again not too long ago.

Originally posted by Shadowalker
I guess the topic is ATS screening content. Then prove it.

try to make a research thread with crossed references from scientific papers proving how hemp, the one you definitely canNOT smoke can decontaminate land from nuclear radiation in amazingly quick time;

and see what happen to it

(or search for thread like this - little hard to find because they are buried in order to not be given visibility)

you can also go through the 91000 results mentioned above

lol they did not only removed it from homepage,

they moved this thread as well

which is dishonest because this was really about deconstructing disinformation

maybe ats has become too big

then it 'd need serious deconstruction,

but they like money too much

EDIT: I guess what happened here 100% proved the whole point about the moving threads & content control theory ./

Originally posted by XmikaX
lol they did not only removed it from homepage,

they moved this thread as well

They had to put on the front page. Not just content control,

damage control.

Why is the friction raged against?

Without the friction, then there would be no motion.

Without a differing view, thier would just be "the view" (and that show blows)

I actually find this place refreshing as I can say my mind in a place and get a "reaction" .

The differance in point of view is awesome, and helps me too see from different perspectives, even the ectreme one's ( which I have a few as well).

Everyone should have a voice, but we do need order, and agreeing on an "order" is tough.

Seems to me this site in general makes a very honest effort to be staight up and honest within "reason".

Another opinion.

Cheers!!

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