This post is written a few weeks ago when I first knew about the idea of applying moderation in Balatarin.
A few nights ago, I went to my mother in law’s place, just to be whipped by her and by my angry wife, Azadeh, both of whom are members of the Iranian community, Balatarin.
Earlier that day, I had shown the email Mehdi, one of Balatarin’s owners, had sent to me and a to few other users. There, he had talked about the need for having some level of moderation in Balatarin, “to make sure the links abide the laws and also to prevent abusive users”. I had agreed with him. As the number of users of Balatarin are increasing, so is the number of users who think it is funny, and genius, to vote for a link with multiple usernames which read like ali1, ali2, ali3, ali4, ali5, etc. Also, we have started to see links to pornography and anti-Islam offensive content posted in Balatarin. So, it was very easy to understand; we did need moderation.
After I pushed the buzz, Azadeh came to the door. I could sniff trouble. Even the cat was looking at me angrily. I went to the kitchen and sat down. That was when I was bombarded by sentences like “hello, Mr. Supreme Leader”. “Guess who was talking about democracy a while ago”. As much as I remember, I was under heavy artillery fire for over an hour.
Right now, at the middle of over thirty activist women having been arrested, and Iran being on the brink of a war, the three most clicked-on links in Balatarin are as follows; a creatively sexist ad for a lotion, a part of a Shah-era movie shot in a women’s public bathroom, and an X-ray of a kiss (shown in the above). In fact, there is only one “intellectually decent” link in the list of the ten most popular links in Balatarin. I guess this proves, as if anyone had any doubt, that the Persian blogsphere is interested in what the rest of the world is interested in, you might say a bit excessively though. This discussion probably shows that a link-list which targets the Blogestan, and, to some people’s understanding, is in fact nothing but an archive of what Iranians find interesting, should be as Balatarin is slowly turning into. Or, should it?
Everyone has the right to be interested in anything they want and to write about them in their blogs. That’s probably why Google returns over a hundred million entries when you search for “one plus one is three“. That, however, does not mean that the Internet, in a general meaning, is a lousy place. Having said that, I never begin my day by searching “Iran” in Google. So, to my understanding, Balatarin is not just a smaller sample of the Internet. This is also emphasized in the “add new link” page in Balatarin. For example, Balatarin policy states that “your description should be related to the link you are posting. If you have any personal idea about the link you can always write about it in your blog and then post the regarding link”. Also, copying content from other sources and using offensive language are banned. Having said all this, I think the ladies pointed out a very serious threat, that Balatarin may become close to what Sobhaneh has turned into.
I was talking to Alee, another to-be moderator of Balatarin, a short while ago. He told me that on top of everything else, Balatarin had helped him “know more people”. I thought he meant in a general way, but he continued, “before, I knew people who were around me and were in fact very much like me”. I agree with him. Balatarin users come from very different backgrounds, and I think that’s one of the factors that makes Balatarin strong. I guess there are many teenager users in Balatarin, whose interests are completely different from mine, an almost thirty-year-old man who is losing his hair.
I made peace that night with the ladies, not through strong reasoning or begging. We kind of reached the point that we all knew what the worries were. I think we need the same thing in Balatarin. After all, any of the moderators will lose their “position” if they start acting like a Khameneii.
Update: A respected commenter seems to have got the wrong message from my sentence “we have started to see links to pornography and anti-Islam offensive content posted in Balatarin”. First, the point is that from the thousands of links ever posted in Balatarin, only a couple of them have been found to be offensive/pornographic and thus have been removed. As much as I remember, there was only one irrelevantly offensive anti-Islam link. Maybe it helps to remind you that Balatarin is known to be a liberal website to many people. Sometimes, blogging is harder than writing a scientific paper! (Thanks to Mehdi for the reminder)
If Balatarin wants to be fair, I think it should also have a view in which it shows all contents without any censorship. And if you found out that enough people (I mean real people with distinct IP addresses and after anti-spam measures) have voted for that link then they will know that there is something wrong with either their rules or the moderators.
Comment by pooya — April 1, 2007 @ 9:50 pm
we have started to see links to pornography and anti-Islam offensive content posted in Balatarin…
So now anti-Islam “hateful” comments are placed at the same level as pornography for you lot? What jerks all you muslims are… “moderate” or not!
Why the hell are you outside the lovely land, the umm-al qura’ of Islam in the first place?
Get the hell out of here and back to your islamic stables
Comment by G.Watt — April 1, 2007 @ 11:09 pm
Pooya,
Using your argument, with all respect, as at least ten percent of the Internet is porn-related, and I am guessing conservatively, thus one in every ten links in Balatarin should be to porn. Do you think so?
Comment by Kamangir — April 2, 2007 @ 5:04 am
G. Watt,
I am not a Muslim. Neither do I believe in God, for that matter. Nevertheless, as the majority of Iranians are Muslim it is out of courtesy to avoid hateful messages ss we also do stop antisemitic messages and others which hurt other groups. Clearly, criticism is more than welcome.
Sorry if I have offended you in a way I don’t even know.
Comment by Kamangir — April 2, 2007 @ 5:11 am
Sorry Kamangir but I don’t buy this kind of argumentations.
Bringing up antisemitism whenever one talks about socalled “offenses to Islam” is such a cheap shot! Antisemtism is abhorrable and should be banned because it is an instance of racism and viscious attack against an ethnicity -or atleast against the ethnic identity of a group of human beings. Islam is an ideology like communism or the likes and no matter how much any ones links or comments are percieved as “offending” it, no true liberal would ever commit the act of censorship for such an excuse. This is absolute rubbish and is against every single tenet that defines liberalism.
So shame on you for putting pornography and offense to a freaking ideology in the same category.
Comment by G.Watt — April 2, 2007 @ 6:53 am
“abhorrable” This is the effect of arguing Islam. Maybe Allah has already put a curse on my English.
Geez! abhorrent.
Comment by G.Watt — April 2, 2007 @ 7:06 am
G. Watt, I have no argument to pick with you, but I must tell you I resent everything you hold dear. To hold anti-semitism as so abhorrent while telling Kamangir to go back to his ‘Muslim stables’ is absolutely hateful.
The truth is you do not mind any kind of intellectual attack on anybody even mildly associated with Islam, but you will defend any of ‘God’s chosen people’ to the death.
Bear in mind while reading this that I am white as a sheet, and a convicted atheist.
Helpful hint for racists: Arabs are a semitic race.
Comment by zaratzara — April 2, 2007 @ 10:07 am
Yeah Zaratzara, I think people are really forgetting two super important things in regards to anti-Islamism and anti-semitism.
The first is slandering Islam and Muslims, a relgion and religious persons. A Muslim can be any color, speak any language, and come from any country.
Anti-semitism is slandering semites, a people who are both religious and non-religious. This term is commonly only applied to Jews, but it isn’t true. Hebrews aren’t the only semites.
The other thing is that people, especially those in the media, want to make Muslims and Jews a certain type of people. As in Jews and Muslims are a nationality, not a religion.
Such BS. It’s like saying that as a person with an English heritage, I am by default Anglican and all English people are Anglican and call England their homeland.
How absurd.
Comment by Tom — April 2, 2007 @ 4:00 pm
G. Watt,
I do understand your concern. What I am talking about is the montage of an Islamic icon’s head on a pornographic body, and I am trying to make up an example because I do not remember what that one link was.
I guess you can find it in my blog that I am a serious critic of Islam.
Comment by Kamangir — April 2, 2007 @ 5:04 pm
I know what you say Kamangir. The porn thing is very tricky. If I want to follow my own argument, there could be a category for porn where only authenticated users can see those kind of content and not to censor it. But I am sure if I was an admin there I wouldn’t let this happen. Maybe that’s shows how we Iranians all have censorship in our blood ;)
Comment by pooya — April 2, 2007 @ 5:32 pm
I appreciate the time you put to clarify this point. this is however different from what states in the text and in your first attempt at justifying it.
You should know Kamangir that after the spectacle Muslims around the world have put up in the past few years and demonstrated their “humiliation” and how they prefer to vent it out, many of us in the West are simply fed up with any sentence that contains the words Islam and offend in it.
Hopefully this will become even more prevalent in the West as time goes by and more people are awakened to what it is they are really facing.
Comment by G.Watt — April 2, 2007 @ 8:29 pm
man ke porny neminam to in site…am I missing something?
Comment by serendip — April 3, 2007 @ 12:08 am
Serendip,
Because irelavent links are moderated. :)
Comment by Kamangir — April 3, 2007 @ 12:09 am
Good luck in keeping out the porn. Porn merchants seem to find ways arounds the new road blocks constructed. Another section of bloogers, the male potentcy drugs, are the same problem. My Akismet blocked spam has increased from just under 200 blocked messages to over 800 blocked messages in less than a month. And despite all the blocks some of the links and messages still get through and I have to delete them manually. The porn merchants are infecting the internet with their spam.
Comment by thescoundrel — April 3, 2007 @ 12:54 am
[...] think all the moderation that I did in Balatarin finally paid off. Last weekend we were playing the fantastic Iranian game [...]
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