This is supposed to be a blog entry, but I’m passing it as an article.
Jahanshah, my man, why don’t you make a change to this new system of yours???? Come on man! I do not have the time to go and set up a website and compete with you. Please! Just do it for my pocket’s sake! I am not poor, but I definitely hate losing money, and I know I am going to lose money at least for a couple of years if I start to set up a blog-site for Iranians who are suckers enough to write for free after having thought something through for hours, or even days!
Come on man, for the sake of my money! And even after two years of losing money I am only going to have ice-cream-cash profit after having paid a couple of guys. There aren’t so many Iranians out there anyway who can read English, or who actually READ something. I am pretty sure there are too many Iranians watching porn on the Internet… that is where the real money lies (I am not doing that, just for the record).
So, Jahanshah, you like money less than I do, but I like to write once in a while, please man, do something about this new system of yours. It sucks. Now, seriously speaking, just take my suggestion into consideration! I am a hard-working ambitious guy, but what I really really hate is to see my work being pissed upon by idiots. That I dislike, and I am not a masochist to go and do something I dislike. And that is why I have started to dislike writing for the website.
But there is some attachment to the Iranian community and you have done a good thing by giving us the possibility to keep that. So, listen to us, the dissatisfied contributors!
I can come up with all sorts of bullshit (did I ever use this word before? I doubt… it is nothing compared to what you will see in the comments-section just below) like saying that Iranians need my “rant” (quoting from previous comments), I write to do good to the Iranian community, I am going to come after you, I am going to kill myself etc.
But the matter of fact is, and it is a simple matter of fact, that I (and many others like me) LIKE writing, but we definitely DO NOT like seeing our work turned into a toilet-paper by commentators, some of whom either use foul language while others talk about completely irrelevant things just below our articles. That bothers me, and other contributors.
However there is also a positive side-effect to the simple fact that some people like me like writing. That positive side-effect is that the small number of Iranians who actually read something can see some glimmer of uncensored IRANIAN stuff, maybe quality stuff, go and talk about them with their friends and family, and maybe, just maybe, the Iranian community (and the country) becomes somewhat a more open-minded, more evolved and prosperous place before we all die.
My suggestion is to give the contributors more power, to accept or reject some, or all, comments. You know what I dislike most? It is not the comments with the foul language but what I can call SPAM COMMENT. Comments that come from people who have nothing to say, who argue about nothing, who are sometimes non-Iranian (completely out of touch with the area we come from), and I need to say this again, it is NOT about the things that are addressed at the authors that bother the authors (or I am guessing) but more about seeing your work turned into a piece of trash by some people.
People have something to say about my (or other peoples’) articles, okay, fine, I am a liberal, I endear freedom of expression so much, but they can always write their own articles in which they can argue about their cause. Nothing wrong with that! What is wrong with giving the author the possibility to accept, or reject, comments?
I know how you feel, and how you see things Jahanshah, and I have seen websites that also have comments-section. That is great. But virtual newspapers that have comments enabled usually let only some comments through, ones that are relevant to the subject, and that do not contain foul language.
I have simply lost the inspiration, or desire, to write, because it is not a pleasure now. Maybe it will all settle but I think some technical adjustment to give the authors more power would not only increase the quality of the pages, but would also give the people more incentive to participate more intellectually. Quality work will always be quality work, and junk-yard will always be a junk-yard, and I think there are SO many Iranians who would gladly write their stuff for the Iranian community using their real names, therefore giving more value to the work, but I am also sure they deserve to have their work respected, and also their integrity untouched. It is not a big deal, and it is about respecting the person, the person that has not usually known respect in Iran or outside Iran, neither from authorities nor from others.
