Anonymouse

Shepesh, you misunderstand the thing to "prove"

We seem to agree, somewhat. I'm not against people being anonymous for whatever reason, I'm just against the abuse of this anonymous status to slander real people and then hiding under the name. IF they truely feel that their personal lives are in danger (mostly BS, in my opinion given how many people do share their names), then fine, continue using anonymous names. But afford the same courtesy to other people too by not slandering them or spreading lies.

People don't need to use their names to get in trouble in either the US or Iran. People can slander other people and use their name without their permission to get them in trouble. And this happens all the time, so why is this form of harrassment acceptable?

Q

People who use their real names will be in trouble if they go to Iran, and there may be repercussions for their families and friends. THis has already been said on ths site. This does not require proof ! Also, there are some nuts on the internet that even try to "out" anonymous people on the internet. The internet is a dangerous place. I know of peoples whose businesses have been targeted. I am surprise that such an intelligent man as yourself has to be told this.

Prove it!!!

Talk is cheap my friend. Close this account, enter under your real name and put your money where you mouth is.

Since, we have so many people on this stie who are not anonymous and obviously travel to many places, your "argument" seems hollow to say the least.

Your "explanation" is also hallow for another reason. You're obviously wrong when you say "people remain anonymous because of possibility of violence". Why would millions and millions of Americans (a few on this site) also remain anonymous when they have no relationship with IRI?j

Why did people like Zion, programmer Craig, American Wife, etc. choose to be anonymous if the issue is "violence"?

Why do all these anonymous chatrooms and blogs exist in the Western world which is "free" and there is obviously no possiblity of state violence against people?

The answer is simple. People remain anonymous because they don't want their real names and reputations to get harmed. That is the reason. Anything else is feel good fantasies of exaggerated self-importance I'm afraid. Even if Iran was completely democratic or if Iran never existed in history, there will still be people who choose to be anonymous.

Given that this is the major reason explaining why some of both Iranians and non-Iranians choose anonymous ID's, it is only fair to make sure those who do use their real names to feel safe and protected. YOU do not want this protection for selfish reasons.

Q

People come to IC for different reasons, they have nothing to justify to anyone. Some come here to promote themselves, poetry, their books, etc. That is fine. But others do not, there is a bit of snobbery here  - this name business being used to put others down. Now please let me tell you that there was Bijan M, Faramarz Fateh, etc who came and went. The second man had offensive things written about him in a personal blog and he left. You will see that many of Minorities have come and gone because they were addressed with abuse, while the abusers are still here.

Q

IF, you had to use your real name, would you support the
same "free market of ideas" (which in the real world never allows
actual slander but in this make-belief playground it happens) ?

Yes! Absolutely. I am not afraid or worried about slander. People remain anonymous because of possibility of violent retaliation from IRI. Specially when people travel to places that exposes them to such retaliation. Got it?

VPK, you totally misunderstand

It was not a jab at "Cyrus" but a jab at you. Just so you know. It's you who are pretending like 25 votes out of a million is "democracy". OK?

I'm not afraid of anything. What you advocate is status quo which I still participate in. I do see unfair abuses that happen all the time, by a brownshirt mob mostly at the expense of people with real names and careers. It's probaly the reason why such a tiny tiny percentage of site visitors even bother leaving comments.

Now, I asked you a simple question, which I will repeat in a slightly different form.

IF, you had to use your real name, would you support the same "free market of ideas" (which in the real world never allows actual slander but in this make-belief playground it happens) ?

You continue to make a fallacious statement that allowing content moderation by bloggers means it's not "open" anymore. Leaving a comment under your own blog or somewhere else allows you to say whatever you want. It's not "closed" or any kind of threat to "speech" at all. Its curious why you can't see this simple fact.

Q

1) You are totally miundestanding me. I am not doing *you* a favor. I am being consistent in my support for free speech. Nothing to do with you. It is not me "allowing" you. It is the general concept of removing comments I am talking about.

2) You jab at Cyrus is uncalled for. Why do you have to express your contempt for pre-Islam Iran at every chance?

3) My name is anonymous for my own reasons. I am not worried about slander. People can read both pro and con posts and decide for themselves which is right. Charge of sander is yet another excuse frequently used in oppressive societies to stifle speech.

Finally: what are you so afraid of? Sargord for all that I disagree with him is open enough to go to the free market of idea. What is so bad about that.

Shepesh

Thank you for your kind words. I support your suggestion of scoring comments. It is a fine approach to express yourself without hindering free speech.

'Kharejis'. Shepesh,

Shepesh, Tim left because he felt isolated and misunderstood. His account is still open (you can always check this at the bottom of the site under Contributors). Craig was blocked I think three times and finally decided not to come back. But he was obstreperous--but still I feel the situation could've been handled much better by 'admin' (iI feel in general they could be). There was American Wife. There are humanbeing, David W. Duke, me, we come and go. In all cases the non-Iranianness has been a factor (I've communicated with all of them). But there is Yolanda, there is Rea. Latina...there are a couple of others you might not realize. I believe LoverofLiberty is one.

But it's by no means just the 'khareji' factor, I could name you quite a few Iranian members among the best and brightest who opted out. The main reason they said was the tawdry/aggressive factor--'vulgarity and coaseness', as one of them called it. A couple focused on the moderation part of that. A couple said they felt driven away too--you might be surprised who. But about the importance of the non-Iranian perspective, that is what I've told Rea but she doesn't seem to believe me.

VPK

One reason I was suggesting a incremental Score on comments is so that I can increment your comments and others who are a true asset to IC and Iran. I agree with 99% of everything you say. I do not care that you do not use your real name, as it is your views and logic that count. Not the type of people who try to win through intimidation . I do not usually write "appreciation" comments that the cliques do to one another here on IC, but please do not be intimidated,  so many agree with your civil approach and sensible comments.

PLEASE don't do me any favors!

VPK/Anahid,

This is one of the most popular Iranian site on the Internet. Anything said here is instantly on Google. I don't know the number, but it's probably over a million people who visit this site.

Now you, hypocritically, attack Anonymouse for being "undemocratic" and say a "clear majority agree", on the basis of 25 VOTES ????

Who is acting like the dictator here?

You say, you want to allow me and Sargord to speak (thanks for that gracius Cyrus-like gesture of humantiy!). But if you really belive this then just don't delete anything on your own blogs. What's the problem?

The second major reason you (VPK) are being hypocritical is because you are anonymous and you keep pretendling like everyone is anonymous. You say, you don't have a problem being criticized, the real question is do you have a problem being slandered under your real name? The answer to that is obvious, since you do not use your real name, yet you want those who do to play by your rules.

Javid, I disagree with Sargord. Your time and economic resources is realistically a concern and they should be a concern and there's no shame in it. The only problem I have with you is your inconsistency.

However, I have to say that if you think some kind of "button" will solve your problem, you are mistaken. You will still be faced with serial slanderers and attack dogs under any circumstances. If you have ratings, then they will be abused, particularly if the raters' identities are not known. But even if you expose all the raters' ratings, some people can make fake accounts and always rate people low.

The basic problem is your refusal to enforce a "one person" = "one account" policy which most other sites have. (Also called no sockpuppets). Without this, no rating, no voting, no polling, nothing is certain.

There is something called Open Threads that they use at Dailykos. It means anybody can say anything about any topic.

If you allow bloggers to moderate their own comments which leads to better discussions in my opinion. You can always have these open threads on blogs that you start yourself and there you guarantee no one else does any deletions. (Of course you still have to do the minimum that you do now.)

I suggest people like VPK and Anahid who have become outspoken advocates of "democracy", should lead by example and turn their own blogs into open threads, not dictate to others what they should do on their blogs.

Cheezaki, Thanks for the video. It was really funny, I have to admit. Where do you find this obsecure sh@## ?

Rosie and Shepesh

Rosie, thank you for your kind comments. I appreciate your comments  and your insights.

Shepesh, I agree wholeheartedly. 

Something else I have noticed

Where are Craig Ex programmer, Timothy Floyd and other non-Iranians gone? Such a place like Iranian.com should allow people of all views and nationalities to participate so that we can broaden our horizons. They were not as offensive as many I see commenting on IC, but somehow they were driven away or blocked. If we want to chat with people that just agree with us or that we are joon jooni with, what is the point of having a Public Forum? Is that not a way of silencing opposing views? 

Now me.

I wasn't aware of this blog til I voted yesterday and only today I read up the thread. There were a number of points I drafted but I'll just make one now.

Before I do I want to say that although this is one issue where my opinion is unwaiverable ('nay'), it is wonderful that Mouse went to all the trouble of carefully crafting and monitoring for days a blog on an issue concerning site functioning and oversight. I have said many times that  there are not enough of these so we keep getting further and further away from the original collective vision. So thanks Mouse, for the blog, and Shazde, for yours, and even better, Jahanshah for commenting. And now, moving on:

Mouse, you wrote to VPK in your post titled VPK, you talk, talk, talk, but of no substance! Just yak, yak yak

The trend is for 80% of IC?  You see you take yourself too seriously, just because you yak and yak all over IC and keep plugging away by stitiching sun and the moon for the sake of a comment, think you represent a big chunk of what IC users think. 

I am one of many people who feel VPK is an island of sanity in an ocean of borderline schizophrenia. (Well, usually anyway lol). There are many reasons why a person may have a large amount of time to devote here--working part-time, being retired, etc. The reasons are none of our business. What is our business is that such a person is dedicated to the site as a force for the betterment of the Iranian community.

When someone says someone else's participation is excessive (and it happens a lot), the shorthand form is that old chestnut 'Get a job' or 'Get a life'. One of a cornucopia of stock insults along with 'You are: an agent, not Iranian, on Prozac, etc.' These things more than anything else are responsible for driving the quality of the discourse into the gutter. From there the tawdriness accelerates exponentially. Actually, if it weren't for these things, there wouldn't even be any need for bloggers to want control over their threads.

Yet in the paragraph right below the above excerpt you wrote:

No my friend the purpose of this blog was to bring up that section of the IC who do not participate as much but are a big chunk of it and not everyone wants to act as an average stereotypical Iranian who wants to ruin a good conversation and start the namecalling and polluting the airwaves. 

The part about the section who doesn't participate as much seems to me irrelevant. The issue isn't what group or percentage 'pollute the airwaves'. Pollution comes from wherever it comes and then snowballs.

Now, Mouse, I'll just throw in a response to your saying that no one who voted 'no' has answered whether they're iafraid they'll delete too many posts.

No.

Thanks again for the blog.

One more thing JJ

You say:

In any case, there will be some changes. And whatever happens your ideas will be carefully considered. Thank you for sharing.

Why? Because a vocal minority wants to stifle debate? I am afraid anonymouse has managed to poison IC and the damage is done. As I said before this is *your* site. You are free to make whatever changes you want.  However if these restrictive policies go into effect do not expect IC to keep the same members. I for one am not going to stick around and watch it turn into a sham. There are plenty of sham sites around: BBC HYS being the highest profile one.

So far IC has been an exceptionally free site. Restrict it and you will choke off free debate.

Dear JJ

IC is not Facebook. They are totally different. Facebook is a personal networking systyem. Designed to connect us to our friends and family.

On IC many of us are anonymous. Many are not friends in fact are quite adversarial. MM said it well, if you let 4 or even 8 flags delete a comment then many interesting ones will be deleted. Pretty much all of Q; Sargord; Fred and some other people's comments will be gone. I don't want that.

I ask: why delete comments? I see very few valid reasons to ever do so. The only kind I ever want deleted are spams like some "free" ads we see spamming IC. Or like that guy who spammed the reports from Iran with numrous content free posts.

Being offensive is no reason to delete a post. I don't care how many people don't like them. But this is not my site it is yours.

Another almost off topic to JJ

I would not want to control other peoples comments, but my own comments (sometimes I cannot delete my own comment or change it) and to be able to delete my account if I want to.

Sometimes I see the EDIT button does not appear anymore if I want to change my comment, and I know some people have to ask you in person to delete their comment or Block them.

I would not want to control other peoples comments or where the discussion is going. I think that is wrong.

Actually while we're on the subject, it would be great to have a "Recommend" button that increments a score for each comment. SO that people who agree with a comment can press the button . The Guardian Online has this and it is very good feature.

Actually, JJ's looking at

Actually, JJ's looking at this from the perspective of his own, personal labor.

He's thinking if he can tweak the programming a little, he won't have to put in time monitoring the site (God forbid he actually have to work at this thing to receive revenue from the ads, such as the those from that anti-Iran, pro-Zionist source.)

Yeah, you're right, MM. Perspectives from the mainstream Iranian view, such as those by me, Q or even No Fear would be subject to a campaign to drive us off. But hey, JJ wouldn't have to lift a finger and that represents a bottom line- not well rounded debate.

So it would become ever more EXILED_IRANIAN.com. Me? There's a number of better things I could be doing with my time, since I'm not getting paid (like JJ or "Fred" or possibly Darius) for this effort. 

Almost off topic to JJ

I'm just wondering if you are for activating a polling feature at IC, where a question such as the subject of this blog can be answered without any room for a lengthy preach-like comment?

And, how about like/dislike button for comments?

And!!, how about a system of gradual membership when the privilege increases as you stay longer and cleaner. Like a demerit system which is used for driving.

Never increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything.

JJ - automatic deletion w/o oversight is NOT good

I disagree with automatic deletion if 4 or more red flagged the comments.  Case in point is Sargord Khan or Q, whose comments will be red flagged, sight unseen, by many in this site.  Need I say more!

Comments, as long as they do not contain foul language should be allowed to stay.  Also, there are numerous comments which are personal attacks on the commentor without addressing the main subject.

If you must, I vote for a rating system where the readers can click on the comment with regards to something like:

like/dislike

foul language 1-3

condescending language 1-3

logic 1-3

knowledge 1-3

I specially vote for the rating on the condescending language because that is the first step in opening the flood gates on insults and personal attacks w/o addressing the main subject.  Once the writers realize that the writings are not appreciated by the readers, they may modify their writings, even if they are against our beliefs. 

There are some writers whose writings I do not care for and I most likely skip reading, because, again, I get accused of .....  If I can make a comment on them w/o being accused of this and that, and rate them, may be we will have a more civil conversation, even if our thoughts operate in totally different wavelenghts.

Thoughts on comments

One issue is that I personally do not want to monitor comments. I don't want to be the one who decides what should be deleted. It's just not in my nature to use an ax, even when it's necessary. I do it because it's become part of my job and it's become clear that there has to be a minimum level of civility to be able to have a discussion in the comments. It's always a moral dilemma to judge people and their views and trying to decide whether to delete or ban or just let them slide. I don't want to be in that position.

I like how the comments are self-regulated on Facebook. Only your chosen friends can leave comments on your posts and you can delete any comment you don't like. What's positive about it is that in a circle of friends, you rarely hear rude, mean or aggressive comments. If you do get critical comments, they're usually constructive and friendly, not abusive.

What's bad about it is that in a closed circle of one's friends, your thoughts will not be challenged very often either. You tend to get positive comments because they come from people who like you. Friends usually reinforce our views and feelings or else we wouldn't keep them around.

In that kind of situation, I'm not sure there can be a vigorous and open debate on iranian.com about various issues in the same way we can today.

The other option that can be helpful is to give readers the ability to delete an abusive comment. If a comment is red flagged 3 or 4 times, it would be automatically deleted. That would save me a lot of headaches. And if too many or too few comments get removed this way, you can only blame yourselves. The amount of freedom you will have would be equal to what your community can tolerate.

I can already sense that that may not be the best idea, given that we are not know for our tolerance.

In any case, there will be some changes. And whatever happens your ideas will be carefully considered. Thank you for sharing.

Dear VPK, Great comment.

Dear Anonymouse, you should not continue the vote when it is obvious that the majority is with the NO vote .

I was going to keep out of this

But eliminating Sargord's vote is unacceptable. I propose we end this sham now. It is obvious that Anonymouse is not serious about this so called "vote". Why don't you just cross out all the 18 votes? Then you win just like all the dear dictator's we have had.

---------------------->> 7 YES and 18 NO <<---------------------

Sargord I eliminated fractured your vote altogether!

Everything is sacred

Hurray for .125!  

Hurray for .125!

-------------------->> 7 YES and 18.125 NO <<-------------------

I updated the blog to make a change and keep the voting open until we're Free at last!

Cheezaki what is your vote? 

Everything is sacred

Q, Wot? You said Captain?

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOpJqYHoctg

Well, look who is talking...

Kadivar,

I'm glad you're voting yes. Your reasons are valid. But you forget your own sizable contributions to the situation.

I have since stopped writing even for payvand.com where I contributed regularly before they included a comments section and only got slanderous provocative reactions including from the former capt_ayhab

Yea, "slanderous provacative reactions" to real-life individuals can really be hurtful can't they, Kadivar?
//iranian.com/main/blog/q/case-study-defa...

I know just what you mean.

Our captain was sensible. I'm not sure if that's who it was or whatever, but I can vouch for the fact that if it was him what he probably wrote was nothing but the truth since as I said, Captain was a sensible man.

Yes, yes, yes!

Oh, that felt good ;-)

No, no, no.

Absolutely not.

Just a bit more level and consistent deletion policy. Well, I guess not policy. More like procedure.