I need a smoke...

[_Amaterasu]

Well, I can see why you'd be upset about the edits. I wonder what the rationale behind the edited version was.

[_GoodK]

The new editor responded:

Eric - Thanks for getting in touch. The story was strong in terms of its emotional relevancy and has been generating traffic, but only to the first page as 7 pages is VERY long for the Web and most left immediately. The new maximum per article is 600 words as this is the most anyone will read for one article. For this reason we made it into 2 articles and interlinked them, which is much better for traffic and less intimidating, thus vastly increasing traffic to both. Also, no one would type "Mormon Gulag" into a search engine to find this, whereas the current titles do very transparently capture what the stories are about and therefore draw people who are specifically looking for this information, rather than just happening upon it accidentally.

If you revisit our Guidelines on the Post a Story page, all this is outlined. There are no ads on the pages except the banner ads and we make very little from these, so it's getting eyes on your story that is our motivation for the changes and not money. A month from now we'll put the Google ads on the pages and pay you a share, at which point in time this will generate funds for both of us, but now we are just trying to professionalize the site by abiding by very well-known truths of web readership, the first of which is length maximums, use of clear keyword titles and subheads.

The story also started with a scene that wasn't in context until several paragraphs later and Web readers need to get the "lead" very quickly. If you feel anything has been misrepresented or misquoted I'm happy to change it, or you can yourself, but the form won't let you post stories longer than those there now, so you'd have to write a new article and interlink it with these if you feel other information could be added. In the future, photos will appear along the bottom of the story in thumbnails that can be expanded rather than on pages by themselves, but this is how it appeared before it was edited and thus gave the reader the impression the story was very long so they bounced from it within seconds. I photo per article is standard until the new interface is launched. The new stats show that people are staying and reading both stories due to the clearer focus and shorter length. I hope this explains further and I'm happy to adjust anything that you feel needs to be for accuracy. Looking forward to your thoughts,

Joy

[_GoodK]

My response:

Joy,

Thank you for your timely response.

I definitely disagree with you on the Mormon Gulag title. For one, if you google Mormon Gulag almost a hundred thousand results come up.

Here are some links that discuss the article as it was originally published:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/1/5/8431/61882

http://www.thefoyer.org/viewtopic.php?t ... 16395ed786

http://www.exmormon.org/boards/w-agora/ ... 1231180399

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/WJResident/

http://www.eurotrib.com/comments/2009/1/5/11131/84050

http://www.pamshouseblend.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=8920

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009 ... rmon_g.php

Two radio interviews:

http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/krcl/ ... ID=1457176

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/GayTalk/20 ... Boys-Ranch

Not to mention my website, www.mormongulag.com which has thousands of visitors every week after the article was published.

I also made two YouTube videos, where I thanked and promoted Orato.com, before I knew my story would be butchered beyond recognition:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=MuQnF523OW4

http://youtube.com/watch?v=88RQdccd1hE

Also, there were over a thousand views within the first 24 hours of originally being published, and was the top story for quite some time.

If the story remains in such form, I'm going to have to let all the sites that posted the story and linked to Orato to remove the Orato link, after I asked them upon Heather's request to add "republished with permission from Orato" to their site.

I did not submit the story through the "Post a Story" link so I don't believe that those guidelines are applicable to my agreement with Orato. I was asked to write 1200 words by Orato.com for a price. I did not make that number up myself.

I would rather have you remove this story completely than leave it in this form.

I feel like it went from being a good read to a horrible one, and like I said, very misleading and missing most of the original message. Starting from the titles and first sentence.

Changing it this drastically a month after the story was published is very frustrating, and not consistent with established journalistic standards.

There are already plenty of websites, with more regular traffic, that have posted this story, and I honestly don't feel like Orato is doing me a favor by changing my story.

I don't want the extra "eyes" if the story is going to remain this misleading.

I would have never approved of this version of the story, and don't feel comfortable with your edits, still.

[_Amaterasu]

So, what happened? I liked your reply and thought you made your case well.