It is one year since that faithful day in December 2012, when J. Javid and his team left Iranian.Com, and S. Amin took over. A picture is worth a thousand words and the one above paints a painful graph. The situation has been obvious to many users and observers, but it is still worth analyzing for the benefit of future contributors to similar websites, that depend on “user-generated” content.
The sudden drop of December 2012 can be clearly attributed to a format change from the nicely edited and organized IC (thanks to JJ) to the chaotic hodge-podge of posts and attacks under Mr. Amin’s editor-less regime. At the time, I wrote a protest letter to Amin, but he said that the old IC format was cumbersome to edit and that the revenue could not support a full-time editor. I also separately received a consistent email from JJ, stating that “editors are a dying breed”.
For 5 months the Iranian.Com was an unedited site, and as you can see from the picture above, its popularity dropped and dropped to below the x-axis! Then, Mr. Amin bit the bullet and hired (or received from NIAC) a contingent of 4 editors. The front-page quality improved dramatically and the readership briefly jumped to the pre-December 2012 levels.
But then, Mr. Amin and his pro-IRI editors killed the geese who were laying the golden eggs! They introduced such a suffocating system of editing on all the content (from blogs to articles to comments), that Iranian.Com went from “Nothing Is Sacred” all the way to “Everything Is Censored”! As you can see, the site’s popularity has since been dropping again to near the baseline.
Censorship is bad for free speech and worse for the business of all user-generated websites. Editing of the first-page material and selective featuring is very normal, but "approval" for blogs and comments has hurt the sense of freedom and enjoyment, as well as the business of the fallen Iranian.Com.
In conclusion, elegant editing plus freedom of expression works! Sounds simple enough, but let’s see what JJ and Amin can learn from this year of decline.
I think the reduction in viewership of Iranian.com is due to following factors 1- change of its format, especially that it was done at the same time of ownership change. Mr Amin basically started a new site with the old name instead of maintaining the working business, allowing viewers to get used to new ownership before SUGGESTING new formats. 2- most of Iranian.com visitors have always been living outside Iran and they have lost interest in many similar sites. The jump you see couple of months ago was because of elections in Iran. 25% of visitors come from Google search of the word Iranian. 3- over monitoring. I believe the site should allow immediate posting of comments and flag and removing the ones that violate the terms instead of punishing everyone for the actions of few. In fairness, I have been posting blogs in the site, many of them featured and written comments and never sensed censorship and my views is not in line with NIAC or reformists
What I find quite strange is that the worst abusers on the old IC have become the darlings of the new IC, and the ones who complain / complained the most about abuse. People like Iraj Khan (blocked at least once for abuse as Mola Nasreddin); Wahid (blocked at least a dozen times under various usernames and now writing on IC as "ghourbagheh", Niloufar Parsi (warned that she will be blocked if she doesn't stop abusing people); Kharmagas (blocked at least twice under two usernames)...and so forth. Now these people have become the "civilized" ones. But then again, one cannot really be suprised. IR's supporters act just like it. They attack and abuse everyone, and then act as they are the "mazloom," oppressed ones. They also become "civilized" when no one opposes them. They just didn't like the old IC because they were differing point of views, and they couldn't silence them.
PS- SAM- I think that doctor / professor / filmmaker Mohammad Ala is one of their "moderators."
Iranian.com, where the old Commies, NIACis, pro-Regime, and anti-Semites go to exercise their freedom of hate speech!
Thanks dear Shazde for reminding me of the time that I wasted at S. Amin's site. I have always said that the "dallaal-e- mohebbat-e-kachal" was way over his head when he got into this line of work!
I just looked at the site. In the "News" section, Wahid (ghourbagheh) has posted two articles about Israelis harvesting body parts from back in in 2009. I swear, every time I visit that site, my Chrome browser gets inundated with ads about Israel because they people talk about Israel / Palestine so much. One day that I visited the site, I counted every single "News" posting on the front page to be about Israel.
Thanks for the good comments.
David: The IC editors have changed words in my articles, often incorrectly. I cannot go and edit my blogs, or even delete them. My comments have to be approved, even on my own blogs. Aren't these censorship?
Anonymous: The main "editors" in the new IC are (per their actions) pro-IRI, and not even the IRI light (reformist), but IRI shiity (Khamenei and Ahmadi).
Faramarz jan: I actually still reserve my judgement for Said Amin, because he has some positive attributes too. IMHO this year of 2014 will be the judgement time for both Iranian and Iroon ... one of them will survive and the other will fold.
Dear shazdeh, most sites, for example Huffington post or khodnevis.org etc do the same thing. The editors in chief correct or revise in a limited way the material if necessary without changing the message. Articles are permanent and can not be revised or removed by the author once published. Corrections are done separately and noted publicly after publication. Comments are reviewed and approved before posting. Obviously the editors of such sites have own views and choices of what they want presented and how in their site. For example one such site might have liberal views, another conservative and it is up to the writers and readers to choose where they prefer to frequent. As I said in my experience my articles or links submitted have been critical of the regime, as well as the IR reformists and had not been censored. On the other hand exists sites that offer open blog, which are simply a medium for blogger to post and control his or her blog, comments. Iroon.com is almost that type. They do not assume much responsibility for content, do not feature as much and do not act like an online magazine like the first group but more like a bulletin board. The two serve different purpose for different users. Having said all these I do agree that both sites need much improvement. In fact I think JJ has a good concept but can do much more to improve and he is not using the full potential. But on the other hand I do not see him actively seeking suggestions. Same is true w Said Amin. Regards
Dear Shazde
Sometimes I think all these websites are controlled by anti-christs as most users do not believe in god.
To be fair you have to include the effect of "Loyalty" and "Apprehension" and "Conspiracy Theory".
Clearly when JJ left Iranian.com and sold it to Amin, there was a certain amount of built in loyalty to JJ who left along with him.
I will at least say that JJ's departure from IRDC and Amin's impossible attempt to pick up the mantle even if well intentioned, was going to have some negative impact.
What this chart however shows, is that "the JJ effect" has passed. The impact of JJ leaving IRDC has passed, and IRDC is almost right back up where it was when JJ was at the helm. OK, "almost" is a stretch!
Iroon.com's charts however look frankly dismal in comparison. The loyalists who came over from IRDC to this site, may have brought their egos and pride and anger and conspiracy theories along with them, but they have not been able to bring any measurable traffic. At least not enough to justify their original departure.
And I will also at least say that the relative lack of traffic here is also and possibly even largely due to to the haphazard organization of this site. And the design is frankly horrible. In an age when 40% of all web traffic is by phone, this site is realtively unusable on one. IRDC is not much better. But it is better.
I have no doubt that if the design of this site and a more reasonable editorial policy (which ironically has been put in place at IRDC now) were improved, this site under JJ's or any editorial flair has a chance of growing. Free form general commentary by untalented and unreadable writers, as passionately loyal as they may be, is no replacement for good writing.
There is no quality writing here. So far at least. Or, I'm just not seeing anythgin I want to read.
So, as a distinguishing reader, I must of course be right :)