What exactly are you suggesting Metabunk do? We are an open forum; there's going to be a diversity of opinions. Some posts will be higher quality than others. Some posters are more expert than others. Some posts deserve being used as references, some do not.
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You cited
this one example (above) in your Substack. I don't see the problem with it, as it links to an accurate analysis by experts in the topic (mostly
@flarkey, one of the world's leading experts in gelocating planes and identifying Starlink flares.
This is the problem I'm raising: opinions are not objective truth. Adding a CN is saying, "hay guys, this is the truth about this case, a fact check has been added, move along".
But you're not a group of like minded people just talking in a forum anymore and sharing opinions and interpretation of data, you're actively going out and adding that opinion (or interpretation) to the public square as a fact. You're, or some of your forum senior leadership are, creating multiple accounts just to tell people who blocked them that they're wrong about something and linking to Metabunk threads. Contacting podcast guests (experiencers and witnesses) and telling them they've misidentified something and that their belief is therefore wrong because there was a Starlink in that direction at that time. That is quite different from having good opinions and if people like them they can share them around. That's actively correcting public understanding of an event with partial data and asserting it as a fact. Even if they didn't ask for your opinion.
Flarkey didn't have distance/elevation/altitude data in the case you mentioned. If he said, "it's probably this", then that's fine. But that's not what CN's are for. They are fact checking (
fact being the important word). It's not a fact without that piece of data. Yes it follows a path, but that's still missing the full data picture to confirm as a
fact. It's probably that, sure. What did the witness experience and does that match? I just interviewed a doctor who observed a bright orb fly down from the sky, get so close to him it was the size of his first if you put your arm out in front of you, had a physical impact on him, then flew off in a particular direction at incredible speed. This is the space I work in. The man is a
brain expert, literally
. You and Flarkey are working with Starlink geolocating that there was a Starlink, or the ISS was there and then left in that direction, too. So: "It was Starlink, the rest you're probably just confused for tired or something".
If the government come out and officially say there are aliens flying around and able to cloak, but we cant give you any data because of weaponry superiority/natsec etc., then would you still continue on the way you are? Or would your resolutions have to change (considering the government provided no data to you, just the disclosure)?
No one has a problem with opinions and I think it's probably more difficult for you to understand the perspective of a witness, or the SCU example, because I doubt the SCU went to the trouble of adding CN's on your X posts. Or that MarkV added any of his reasoned opinions on any of your posts.
If they had, let's say they started springing up on your posts often enough for you to notice, you may feel differently. Because you may feel they have insufficient data to make that judgement, or you have interpreted that data differently. But they'd be very little you could do. Because most of the UFO folks are focussed on the nuances of the UFO subject (disclosure, whistleblowers, consciousness, CE5, witness testimony, news and so forth) where as you look to pick cases apart and find a conventional explanation. Your Denbigh and Rugeley UFO cases are prime examples. Flarkey and I could go around in circles for years on both cases. I don't know who Flarkey is, or if he is the expert in that niche. I'd like to think my friend Ezra Kelderman, the systems engineer from Harvard is probably the leading expert in that, seeing's as he does that every day, with the best tech money can buy and in large volumes many many many terabytes of data to assess and discount as conventional in the pursuit of the anomalous. But then I know his name, he's credentialed and has a public profile that we can trust. Not an anonymous person with an avatar for their face. I could get on board with being directed to a credentialed expert who is a proven subject matter expert.
But here's the thing about Ezra, despite the many terabytes of imagery he's collected, it needs to be reviewed by scientists first, then peer-reviewed before he'll put it out for public consumption with high confidence on his conclusions. That's what I want from my experts and fact checkers, everything else is opinions on what looks in the right place/path on ADSB, or was a Starlink there at the right time with reflective potential etc. As someone who has interviewed a few pilots now and have been told by quite a few, that military hide drones and aircraft directly under their own aircraft, I know there is stuff out there that cannot be rationalised away, or found on public access software. But you'd put a CN saying you'd identified that weird military aircraft hiding under my friends airliner as...my friends airliner.
And that's just the cheeky military stuff without even going in to UAPs/UFOs.
Why exactly is that controversial? People use far less authoritative sources as CN references. It's STILL just a proposed note, not shown on X. And yes, I voted it as helpful because it is helpful.
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Ultimately, it's a "can't please everyone" issue that will
always be in contention.