Abovetopsecret.com's Wikipedia File

There's a bitter Wikipedia editor out there, man does ATS take a bit of a hammering. I guess somebody who has been banned from here has stuck the knife in on there. Maybe if somebody on here is good at that stuff, that they may want to edit it so it is a little more accurate. I will quote below some of the areas that I thought was a little unfair.

Some members of ATS have strongly criticized the site for their personal perception of overtly censoring content though a large number of moderation staff who actively police to uphold its terms and conditions.[15] Users point out that although this may be necessary for the smooth running of the site, censorship can be perceived as being ironic for a site that is user generated. Also, the notion of censorship is a prominent feature in conspiracy literature and this adds to the problems of ATS censorship.

Members have also been critical of Above Top Secret moderators for not following the terms and conditions while actively making others do so. Their Terms and conditions and rules posting rules made by the owners state that members cannot use the site for recruitment to any causes whatsoever.[16][17] Moderators have broken this rule [18] while censoring members for doing the same

The practice of deleting any post that is inadvertently advertising any of ATS’s rival and smaller conspiracy sites is treated with suspicion. Critics would point out that this is ATS taking advantage of its internet monopoly on internet conspiracy literature for corporate gain and reduces the ability to cooperate with other sites to build on knowledge. One claim made by ATS is that news is reported before it is reported in the mainstream media. This occurs rarely, however, as nearly all "alternative news" on ATS comes from mainstream media sources.

EDIT: As of latest any thread regarding the Sandy Hook shooting is being censored and automatically deleted without any prior warning or justification.

en.wikipedia.org...

In my opinion all of the above comments are actually opinion and not indeed fact and they should be edited out of Wiki, I have no idea about Wiki, but anybody that does might want to do ATS a bit of a favour and correct their bitter inaccuracies.

Sounds about right to me.

reply to post by michael1983l


That`s a real tricky one indeed,, lots of loopholes.

didn`t want to take more space,, i meant by the loopholes that we, and others can write about lots of stuff,
and there are so many rules an restrictions concerning truth and fiction, that we aren`t aware of

reply to post by solve



How do you mean, lots of loopholes. I thought Wikipedia had to present factual information and not opinions and that if a fact was incorrect, which in many of these cases I believe they are, then it could be contested and thus removed from the article?

I think two things on that are real notable.

1. It's all specifically under the "Criticism" section. Sounds like a fertile garden for growing sour grapes to me. I see a bumper crop coming in, in fact. I can't help but wonder how large a contribution the folks adding to that made to the general negative tone here before they became ex-members. With luck, they'll stay off and not sneak back on with different names.....not that it ever happens, right? 'course not.

2. That last part is just hilarious. So now the fact ATS offers unlimited image storage with the unlimited ability to display off-site by direct URL is a BAD thing?? Talk about a situation where the staff just cannot win. If they took down the image storage, many here would scream bloody murder (myself included.). With it? It's somehow improperly "forcing" members to use that 100% free and easy image storage? Yeah... Right.. whatever. :shk:

Yes indeed... The drought may be killing the US Heartland, but wiki is growing those sour grapes by the truck load. lol

Originally posted by michael1983l
reply to post by solve

 

How do you mean, lots of loopholes. I thought Wikipedia had to present factual information and not opinions and that if a fact was incorrect, which in many of these cases I believe they are, then it could be contested and thus removed from the article?

I checked the link and those statements are found under the title "Criticisms" and are justifiable in that context. They may or may not be true, but they are held to such an extent as to make them justifiable criticisms.

reply to post by HopSkipJump


Maybe then it is time for a counter-criticism section?

Hell with em' . There's a reason I picked ATS as my world wide home , I've been alive for a while now and I don't believe that I've ever seen anywhere else that does such a great job of allowing almost everyone to speak their peace while not letting things go to far .

I am very proud of being a member of this website that allows such a vast plethora of points of view while being smart enough (and caring enough) to know that the people of Sandy Hook don't need to be attacked right now and that you don't need to say stupid and hurtful things even if you do think it's a government conspiracy .

My only fear with expressing my ideas on ATS is that someday one of these yahoos will say something that will make me go ape dung on em' and get me kicked out of here and if that's my only fear that's pretty awesome.

Originally posted by TsukiLunar
Sounds about right to me.

I watched the Forums for awhile before finally joining to make a post. From what I can see the Wikipedia article is accurate but actually doesn't go far enough. The information contained therein causes me to NOT want to post anything here of any real significance for fear of being censored/banned.

The censorship really became noticeable in the extreme on the topic of Sandy Hook. I saw that many SH threads were subjected to arbitrary closings for no apparent reason other than outright gate-keeping type censorship, so I did a search on "Sandy Hook" and opened 22 threads - all of them closed except one (and even that one is NOW closed) all without comment and without justifiable reasoning. I stopped counting at 22 - I was getting sick.

If this were truly a "conspiracy" site these kinds of actions against its membership would not be happening in the way that they do here.

Originally posted by thudpuddy
Hell with em' . There's a reason I picked ATS as my world wide home , I've been alive for a while now and I don't believe that I've ever seen anywhere else that does such a great job of allowing almost everyone to speak their peace while not letting things go to far .

Amen to this. Where else on the internet can a true red Communist come on, post like Lenin and Stalin were the greatest men since Jesus Christ walked the earth to immediately be followed by a true blue American posting how they wish Churchill just had Stalin shot in the head to get things done way back then......and see BOTH rather radical opinions stand without a single bit of staff interference?

I've been on many a site over the years that tried and died for becoming something like ATS. Many a place would ban on the spot if a post conflicts with admin's personal world view. (MOST sites..for that).

Here? Heck... I see the FAR FAR ends of both extremes to alllllmost any topic imaginable and if anything? A mod like Heff willl come into something, as the member he also is, and offer his own opinion. A number of mods will....while absolutely sticking to the maxim of "Thou shalt not moderate a thread thou joins into".

* I've carried that little rule over to the sites I'm professionally involved with, too.

It's a great ethical standard and again, what I'd point to as an example of what no site HAS to do...but this one does. It makes ATS stand out Above The Standard.

you shoulda seen what wiki did to john lear's file. they crucified him and THEN, they erased him from existence, completely, as in his entire file went bye bye.

haters gonna hate.

reply to post by Crakeur


Indeed.

Clearly those criticisms were written by someone banned here for spamming GPL garbage. The mods and staff do a fantastic, thankless, job sifting out the crap so we can all play in the sandbox.

I honestly wouldn't come back if not for them. If not for them weeding out the useless garbage, we'd be no better than any other randomly organized rant fest... i mean forum.

And if we want to go specifically into Sandy Hook.. Yes, if it means I don't have to be embarrassed to frequent this site, please continue to "censor" that story.

ATS is the high water mark for what a conspiracy related community should be. In keeping with that, some decisions have to be made, and clearly we don't all agree on the specifics....

but when it comes to mods, they clearly have the best interest of the community AS A WHOLE at heart. If a few people have to deal with some butt hurt in the process, well...

Suck it up princess... or go complain on Wikipedia. Which, is ironic, considering we aren't supposed to trust Wikipedia as a reliable source of information when posting source articles, yet we consider it reliable enough to get miffed over some complaints.
====
It should be mentioned that stuff is rarely actually "censored" here. Duplicate articles are the reason for 90% of thread closures, T&C violations for a good 9%. Then there's that 1% margin of error to let the mods feel out what they think is best.

There is a concerted effort to infiltrate and marginalize sites, just like this. Heck, there are threads on this very subject here. Certain ridiculous things MUST be weeded out, or sent to the grey area, if not, we risk letting them come in and taint the punch.

Alex Jones anyone? David Icke anyone? 911 no planers and pod people... anyone?

This is a community driven site, that's for sure, but it aint free to run, and a site like this has to cover their staffs collective butts, you don't have freedom of speech here, you have no rights, regardless of how loudly you demand them. If we can just say whatever we want, willy nilly, we put the entire site at risk, as someone has to be held responsible for it, and I'm not paying the hosting costs.... Are you?

Originally posted by TsukiLunar
Sounds about right to me.

Yup. Those criticisms are quite familiar to anyone who has been here for any length of time. I'm not saying I agree with the criticisms, but they certainly are not made up. If you feel compelled to defend the castle, then, Wikipedia being what it is, go CHANGE it. There's nothing preventing anyone here from doing that.

Originally posted by phishyblankwatersClearly those criticisms were written by someone banned here for spamming GPL garbage. The mods and staff do a fantastic, thankless, job sifting out the crap so we can all play in the sandbox.

I honestly wouldn't come back if not for them. If not for them weeding out the useless garbage, we'd be no better than any other randomly organized rant fest... i mean forum.

Yep, the mods do a wonderful job alright. Not only are they tasked with the complex job of facilitating serious discussion on this website, they also have to deal with insufferable sycophants too. They deserve a medal!

Anyone with an ounce of independent thought takes the trouble to view a particular subject from a variety of different viewpoints rather than take for granted that what they are being told from one source is the gospel truth. Should you decide to think for yourself, you may find that there's perhaps a tiny iota of substance to the wikipedia article but (as with any opinion) it is somewhat biased.

Speaking personally, If I wanted to seriously discuss a conspiracy-type subject then my venue of choice would be ATS... and that is thanks to the moderators. However, I'm not that much of a sheep to think that all their 'weeding out the useless garbage' is a good thing. One mans trash is another mans treasure and all that.

The reason that so many Sandy Hook threads where closed was because there were so many of them. Really you only need two or three at the most to avoid clutter. Everyone wanted their own Sandy Hook thread, it was like a fad or something. The same would apply to any topic threads that are made, too many cooks etc.

As for censorship I think ATS Mods are very tolerant, but as the T&c's state if you go off topic, troll or post snidey and insulting remarks etc you are gonna get warned and if you continue to be distruptive then it's bye-bye.

I would agree with what they posted...

I think in the contest of “criticisms” most of the claims made under that section are fair in that context. ATS is like everything else it has lots of good things about it but also some bad things that people should be free to criticise.

I personally like the way the Mods remove certain threads and police strict terms and conditions but if we call them what they really are they are “censorship”. It is censorship to remove anything about Cannabis or remove bad language form threads and I have seen thread in the past that have criticised ATS in some way that have been removed. This is censorship but I would say its justifiable and necessary censorship however it is still a fair criticism of the website.

There are probably something’s on there that might be lies such as Mods using ATS to recruit and covertly editing threads I don’t think that does actually go on so I would have that removed.

Other than that I would say I actually enjoyed reading that page, I found it quite informative and I learned something about this history of the site.

Like one of the Mods above said “haters gona hate”, I say, let em!

It’s what they do; most of this “Criticism” is probably ex-members who got banned having a moan they can’t do it on ATS anymore so Wiki is the next best thing.

My bet is on Bernard. He's the best known scorned ex member.

Erm, I thought this was going to be about wiki-leaks's file on ATS, as in some conversations inside the CIA or the like ... now that would be interesting.

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