Ripple had a seat on the 'alternate crypto-currency roundtable at the 2013 conference. I didn't see anyone holding a gun to their heads.
"Ripple" is a system for managing and tracking account balance. It contains "XRP", which is a built in crypto-currency. It's not quite accurate to say that "Ripple is an alt coin" because it is more than that. However, it might be correct to say that "XRP is an alt coin."
But calling Ripple an alt-coin is to ignore all of its other functionality, which in my opinion is a mistake.
XRP threads go in Alt Currencies. Ripple threads go in Service Discussion. Easy. Now you know where to move your two threads. Thanks.