Balatarin
Encyclopedia
Balatarin is a community website through which users can post links to the webpages of their interest, with an emphasis on Iranian audience. Although only registered users can post links
to Balatarin, registration is free. New links initially go to the "recently posted" page and once they collect enough positive votes, they are moved to the front page, which increases their chance of being viewed. The underlying idea is a mixture of reddit
, digg
, newsvine
, and del.icio.us
.
Balatarin was named editors' pick in 1386
(March 2007 to March 2008) in 7 Sang, a Persian Internet magazine, and it was voted the second most popular Persian website in the same year. Balatarin was also voted the best "News Website" in 1385 by readers of the same magazine.
Balatarin proved to be a very effective social network after the Iranian presidential elections in June 2009. Many Iranians used Balatarin for getting news about the green movement against claimed fraud in elections as the Government had started censoring all the news about the unprecedented protest movement of the Iranians.Balatarin was also used as a platform for coordinating the protest actions against the regime. The effectiveness of such actions were proved during the demonstration of Quds day on Sept.18th 2009. Tens of thousands of Iranians demonstrated against the Iranian government in Tehran and subverted the government sanctioned anti-Israeli demonstration.
Balatarin created a number of new domains such as balatarin.info. Those were subsequently blocked after they were discovered by the Iranian government. Currently, most of Balatarin users in Iran access Balatarin through proxy servers.
From early December 2009, Iranian government start to illegally redirect all the Balatarin visitors from Iran to their own propaganda website called "Nabavi Green Movement".
of one of Balatrin's administrators, saying that not only the server, but also balatarin's DNS
and balatarin's Paypal
account were under serious attack. The hackers had transferred the domains
and assigned them to new DNS. A campaign was launched by several Persian language
bloggers to support the return of Balatarin back online. Fars News Agency
suggested that the website was hacked by Islamist hackers, since only a few links related to the Israel
i invasion into Gaza
had been promoted by users in Balatarin during the 3 week long clash, and that the links posted by the pro-government users had often been disregarded.
During protests on February 14, 2011
, Balatarin was brought down with a massive DDOS attack. Balatarin put up a second server which was brought down by attack within seconds.
and uses MySQL
for database
management. As a Web 2.0
website, it employs AJAX
for improved usability.
A new feature was added to Balatarin on December 7, 2006 after a two-week test period open to a limited number of users. Users with a credit of 15,000 or higher can add a new topic.
Moreover, Balatarin claims to have minimal administrative control over the content of the website. However, it has promoted some high-credit users (four, as of June 16, 2007) as the moderators of the website. Moderators, in contrast to the normal users, are able to remove a link or ban a user according to a written (yet unpublished) "Guidelines for Moderators."
Over time, moderation and submission rules have been controversial and raised tension in many aspects (removing links or banning users probably in order to impose personal ideas, political view, or other interests). This issue has led to some users complaints and treat of quitting the website for the so-called violation of Balatarin's promises as a democratic website. Moreover, one of the founders published a post in the official blog announcing that the site is democratic only to a certain point:
Hyperlink
In computing, a hyperlink is a reference to data that the reader can directly follow, or that is followed automatically. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with hyperlinks...
to Balatarin, registration is free. New links initially go to the "recently posted" page and once they collect enough positive votes, they are moved to the front page, which increases their chance of being viewed. The underlying idea is a mixture of reddit
Reddit
reddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text "self" post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.Reddit was originally...
, digg
Digg
Digg is a social news website. Prior to Digg v4, its cornerstone function consisted of letting people vote stories up or down, called digging and burying, respectively. Digg's popularity prompted the creation of copycat social networking sites with story submission and voting systems...
, newsvine
Newsvine
Newsvine is a community-powered, collaborative journalism news website, owned by msnbc.com, which draws content from its users and syndicated content from mainstream sources such as The Associated Press...
, and del.icio.us
Del.icio.us
Delicious is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks. The site was founded by Joshua Schachter in 2003 and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005, and by the end of 2008, the service claimed more than 5.3 million users and 180 million unique bookmarked URLs...
.
Balatarin was named editors' pick in 1386
Iranian calendar
The Iranian calendars or sometimes called Persian calendars are a succession of calendars invented or used for over two millennia in Greater Iran...
(March 2007 to March 2008) in 7 Sang, a Persian Internet magazine, and it was voted the second most popular Persian website in the same year. Balatarin was also voted the best "News Website" in 1385 by readers of the same magazine.
Balatarin proved to be a very effective social network after the Iranian presidential elections in June 2009. Many Iranians used Balatarin for getting news about the green movement against claimed fraud in elections as the Government had started censoring all the news about the unprecedented protest movement of the Iranians.Balatarin was also used as a platform for coordinating the protest actions against the regime. The effectiveness of such actions were proved during the demonstration of Quds day on Sept.18th 2009. Tens of thousands of Iranians demonstrated against the Iranian government in Tehran and subverted the government sanctioned anti-Israeli demonstration.
Initial Launch
Balatarin was co-founded by Mehdi Yahyanejad and Aziz Ashofteh. Yahyanejad launched the site on August 16, 2006 and Ashofteh joined him in early October 2006. A number of prominent Persian bloggers became the early users of Balatarin. This helped Balatarin become the main destination of people in search of links and news on Iran. Several others have joined Balatarin's team and have contributed to its development and maintenance but they are only known by their pseudo names.Censorship of the site in Iran
On February 1, 2007, only 6 months after the launch of the website, the Iranian Ministry of Information and Communication Technology blocked access to Balatarin. In response, Balatarin asked the users to call the ministry and complain. The given response to the users's and Balatarin's inquiry regarding the ban was that the blocking is due to the posting of a link to an article regarding the rumor of Khamenei's death .Balatarin created a number of new domains such as balatarin.info. Those were subsequently blocked after they were discovered by the Iranian government. Currently, most of Balatarin users in Iran access Balatarin through proxy servers.
From early December 2009, Iranian government start to illegally redirect all the Balatarin visitors from Iran to their own propaganda website called "Nabavi Green Movement".
Hack attempts
On February 3, 2009 Balatarin was attacked and finally hacked after several attempts had been made on the website on preceding dates. A few hours before hacker(s) reached a success, a post appeared on the web feedWeb feed
A web feed is a data format used for providing users with frequently updated content. Content distributors syndicate a web feed, thereby allowing users to subscribe to it. Making a collection of web feeds accessible in one spot is known as aggregation, which is performed by an aggregator...
of one of Balatrin's administrators, saying that not only the server, but also balatarin's DNS
Domain name system
The Domain Name System is a hierarchical distributed naming system for computers, services, or any resource connected to the Internet or a private network. It associates various information with domain names assigned to each of the participating entities...
and balatarin's Paypal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
account were under serious attack. The hackers had transferred the domains
Domain name
A domain name is an identification string that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet. Domain names are formed by the rules and procedures of the Domain Name System ....
and assigned them to new DNS. A campaign was launched by several Persian language
Persian language
Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
bloggers to support the return of Balatarin back online. Fars News Agency
Fars News Agency
Fars News Agency is a news agency in Iran. While it describes itself as "Iran's leading independent news agency", news organizations such as CNN and Reuters describe it as a "semi-official" news agency with ties to the government...
suggested that the website was hacked by Islamist hackers, since only a few links related to the Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
i invasion into Gaza
Gaza
Gaza , also referred to as Gaza City, is a Palestinian city in the Gaza Strip, with a population of about 450,000, making it the largest city in the Palestinian territories.Inhabited since at least the 15th century BC,...
had been promoted by users in Balatarin during the 3 week long clash, and that the links posted by the pro-government users had often been disregarded.
During protests on February 14, 2011
2011 Iranian protests
The 2011 Iranian protests are a series of demonstrations across Iran which began on 14 February 2011, called "The Day of Rage". The protests followed the 2009–2010 Iranian election protests and were influenced by other concurrent protests in the region...
, Balatarin was brought down with a massive DDOS attack. Balatarin put up a second server which was brought down by attack within seconds.
Readership statistics
There are no statistics provided by Balatarin itself but based on the report by Quantcast, Balatarin has about 800,000 page views a day . Alexa website shows 40 percent of Balatarin traffic comes from Iran . Based on Wakoopa website which tracks the usage of different website through its community of members, Balatarin is the 31st most popular social network on the web among all languages.Technical Aspects
Balatarin is written using Ruby on RailsRuby on Rails
Ruby on Rails, often shortened to Rails or RoR, is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language.-History:...
and uses MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
for database
Database
A database is an organized collection of data for one or more purposes, usually in digital form. The data are typically organized to model relevant aspects of reality , in a way that supports processes requiring this information...
management. As a Web 2.0
Web 2.0
The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
website, it employs AJAX
Ajax
- Mythology :* Ajax , son of Telamon, ruler of Salamis and a hero in the Trojan War, also known as "Ajax the Great"* Ajax the Lesser, son of Oileus, ruler of Locris and the leader of the Locrian contingent during the Trojan War.- People :...
for improved usability.
Credit system
Balatarin uses a non-conventional credit system which limits daily activity of new users. Each user has a credit that increases over time based on their activity and contribution in Balatarin. Credit of the user in turn determines their daily energy, the volume of allowed activity. This could prevent overly-active, inexperienced, new users from deteriorating the quality of the system. A fairly complicated quadratic equation is used to calculated the daily energy..Hot topics
Hot topics were created to allow users to organize the submitted links under a new category. Hot topics are highlighted on the front page of Balatarin. The title of a hot topic or its description may be edited by the administrators. In their individual pages, users can find all the links posted under that specific hot topic.A new feature was added to Balatarin on December 7, 2006 after a two-week test period open to a limited number of users. Users with a credit of 15,000 or higher can add a new topic.
Moderators
Balatarin announced moderators (or Balayars, a just-coined word) on April 1, 2007 after a three-week probation period. They invited the then five top-credited users to act as moderators, of which four accepted the responsibility. Moderators' responsibilities include preventing and reacting to vandalism, cheating (such as possessing multiple IDs), and copyright infringement. There is an unpublished "Guidelines for Moderators" that governs moderators' operations.Abuse reports
Abuse reports are a measure to enable the Balatarin community to submit reports about users abusing the system or submitting links violating Balatarin's terms of use. It was added on May 13, 2007.Downtime
Balatarin suffers from limited software development support and therefore it has experienced several downtime episodes over the years.Online vandalism
Similar to other online, open systems, Balatarin is prone to abuse. Possessing more than a user name for an individual has become more of a concern with the growing popularity of the website. There is also a common misunderstanding about the purpose of negative votes, which is turning into a serious issue. This made Balatarin to change its policy of keeping negative-voters anonymous and now it reveals all voter names.Democracy
In Balatarin users are asked for their opinion about introducing changes in the system. This is, however, disputed as there is no clear explanation on how votes are interpreted and put into action.Moreover, Balatarin claims to have minimal administrative control over the content of the website. However, it has promoted some high-credit users (four, as of June 16, 2007) as the moderators of the website. Moderators, in contrast to the normal users, are able to remove a link or ban a user according to a written (yet unpublished) "Guidelines for Moderators."
Over time, moderation and submission rules have been controversial and raised tension in many aspects (removing links or banning users probably in order to impose personal ideas, political view, or other interests). This issue has led to some users complaints and treat of quitting the website for the so-called violation of Balatarin's promises as a democratic website. Moreover, one of the founders published a post in the official blog announcing that the site is democratic only to a certain point:
This abstract impression that some users have, that the democracy only means voting, is incorrect. Democracy needs framework and rules. Balatarin is a democracy only to the extent that links go to the first page by your votes. Some few links (maybe less than 5 percent) that are removed, are according to the rules mentioned in submission page.
Energy pool
The energy pool concept is suspected to promote lower contribution of the users to website, as the weight of posting links is quite high. It also demotes administrative operation of some users, as negative votes require much energy. The reason for the relatively high weight of negative votes is to discourage their misuse. However, mathematical analysis of the energy formula reveals that there are optimal strategies for increasing the credit in Balatarin.See also
- Community website
- Web 2.0Web 2.0The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design, and collaboration on the World Wide Web...
- Ruby on RailsRuby on RailsRuby on Rails, often shortened to Rails or RoR, is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language.-History:...
- RedditRedditreddit is a social news website where the registered users submit content, in the form of either a link or a text "self" post. Other users then vote the submission "up" or "down," which is used to rank the post and determine its position on the site's pages and front page.Reddit was originally...
- Internet censorship in IranInternet censorship in IranIn the first few years of the 21st century, Iran experienced a great surge in Internet usage, and, with 20 million people on the Internet, currently has the second highest percentage of its population online in the Middle East, after Israel. When initially introduced, the Internet services...