New (first?) fully independent Ziarat Group Review Website

[Guest Ziarat_Info]

Asalamualaikum

We have created a new website, Ziarat.info 

This is a fully independent ziarat review website where Momineen can create reviews for ziarats that they have been on in the past in order to build up a reliable community to encourage ziarat groups to be better as well as warn Zaireen of groups to avoid. It is 100% free to register and use and you can create reviews for any/ as many ziarats that you have been on. 

Please register and contribute and help us to spread the word!

Salam

The Team at Ziarat.info 

[Hameedeh]

1 hour ago, Guest Ziarat_Info said:

This is a fully independent ziarat review website where Momineen can create reviews for ziarats that they have been on in the past in order to build up a reliable community to encourage ziarat groups to be better as well as warn Zaireen of groups to avoid.

Salam. How can you know if someone posts a very negative review because they are affiliated with another group?

[Guest Ziarat_Info]

Salam Sister @Hameedeh I pray that Allah keeps you in the best of health and Imaan, thank you for your message. The website only launched today and we truly welcome your & other members' expertise, experience, and advice. 

There are several layers of protection for bad faith actors, we cannot simply remove all negative comments as they are critical information if they are honest. However, we have the following plan in place:

(1) The nature of the functionality of ziarat.info is that people should be able to be identified - if for example, they said that they were able to perform ziarat of Iran with X group at Y time, once the website reaches critical mass someone claiming to be part of that group on that trip making overly negative claims should stand out a mile, especially for other members who were genuinely on that trip. 

(2) The forum is very unlikely to be too active to moderate - as such our moderators will be able to identify obvious signs of sabotage (eg extremely negative comments in a thread where comments are generally positive)

(3) We will have the option of voluntary user verification, so members who are verified are counted as trusted to be honest and conversely we have the option to hide comments/ threads until the poster proves that they are who they say they are if they are saying something controversial. 

(4) We are trialing with a few tour group owners we know personally as a soft launch initially, to develop how they can raise disputes and how we can manage them with an eye to scaling up as the website grows inshaAllah

(5) long term, we have a development plan in place to add a rating system where only verified users can rate tour groups as a more reliable metric. A tour group's overall rating will be an aggregate of sub-criteria like organisation, hotels, transport, and so on similar to TripAdvisor. 

It is close to impossible to remove the risk entirely, but we are starting with honest and clean intentions to build a reliable repository of knowledge for momineen to use as a reference when making informed decisions about which ziarat groups to choose. We hope to improve and evolve as we grow inshaAllah with the support of the Awaited Imam (عجّل الله تعالى فرجه الشريف). There has hardly been a single year that we have been on Ziarat where we have not come at least one group who had their passports stolen by their group leader who abandoned them and fled, this was the trigger for us to create the website so people can warn each other who to avoid, and at the same time encourage and promote those who do a good job. 

I hope this answers your questions! happy to answer any more!

[Hameedeh]

Salam.

2 hours ago, Guest Ziarat_Info said:

There has hardly been a single year that we have been on Ziarat where we have not come at least one group who had their passports stolen by their group leader who abandoned them and fled, 

Oh my goodness. This kind of problem never entered my mind.

2 hours ago, Guest Ziarat_Info said:

this was the trigger for us to create the website so people can warn each other who to avoid, and at the same time encourage and promote those who do a good job. 

Thank you. Good luck to you in all your Islamic activities. 

[Guest Ziarat_Info]

10 hours ago, Hameedeh said:

Salam.

Oh my goodness. This kind of problem never entered my mind.

Yes, unfortunately, it is very common. In 2013 I still remember there was a group abandoned in Najaf of only elderly people we met who had traveled overland from Pakistan and had been left on the street for 3 days and had no way even to contact their families back home. They had not even eaten in 3 days. Luckily we were able to help but how many more are there that people have no idea about?

Another sneaky strategy is for a tour group leader to charge Zaireen for the premium package (north of $2000pp) but only book cheap, low-quality hotels and facilities and keep the difference (as happened to us last year). Momineen is usually quite wary of discussing these things in public but we feel like we should encourage people to speak up due to amr bil maroof and nahi anil munkar and break this taboo of not wanting to discuss sensitive matters in public. It will probably take years to build up the content but the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago, the second-best time is today

Also, we need to make it clear that suffering is *not* a part of the ziarat experience and it does not mean that you are blessed if you have a horrible time. People tend to believe that they are not allowed to complain because they are guests of the Imam (عليه السلام) however if you pay for a service and expect a certain level of comfort, the tour operator is not allowed to rob you, just because you are on ziarat. There needs to be some accountability and some sort of transparency to prevent people from doing this

Salam! 

[notme]

Is this website for the whole world, or just certain country or countries? 

[Abu Hadi]

On 8/9/2023 at 3:32 PM, Guest Ziarat_Info said:

Salam Sister @Hameedeh I pray that Allah keeps you in the best of health and Imaan, thank you for your message. The website only launched today and we truly welcome your & other members' expertise, experience, and advice. 

There are several layers of protection for bad faith actors, we cannot simply remove all negative comments as they are critical information if they are honest. However, we have the following plan in place:

(1) The nature of the functionality of ziarat.info is that people should be able to be identified - if for example, they said that they were able to perform ziarat of Iran with X group at Y time, once the website reaches critical mass someone claiming to be part of that group on that trip making overly negative claims should stand out a mile, especially for other members who were genuinely on that trip. 

(2) The forum is very unlikely to be too active to moderate - as such our moderators will be able to identify obvious signs of sabotage (eg extremely negative comments in a thread where comments are generally positive)

(3) We will have the option of voluntary user verification, so members who are verified are counted as trusted to be honest and conversely we have the option to hide comments/ threads until the poster proves that they are who they say they are if they are saying something controversial. 

(4) We are trialing with a few tour group owners we know personally as a soft launch initially, to develop how they can raise disputes and how we can manage them with an eye to scaling up as the website grows inshaAllah

(5) long term, we have a development plan in place to add a rating system where only verified users can rate tour groups as a more reliable metric. A tour group's overall rating will be an aggregate of sub-criteria like organisation, hotels, transport, and so on similar to TripAdvisor. 

It is close to impossible to remove the risk entirely, but we are starting with honest and clean intentions to build a reliable repository of knowledge for momineen to use as a reference when making informed decisions about which ziarat groups to choose. We hope to improve and evolve as we grow inshaAllah with the support of the Awaited Imam (عجّل الله تعالى فرجه الشريف). There has hardly been a single year that we have been on Ziarat where we have not come at least one group who had their passports stolen by their group leader who abandoned them and fled, this was the trigger for us to create the website so people can warn each other who to avoid, and at the same time encourage and promote those who do a good job. 

I hope this answers your questions! happy to answer any more!

Salam. MashahAllah, very good effort. I will be checking website regularly as I am planning on doing Ziyarat in the near future. A few comments about the above. 

1) The verification / authentication of individuals will be the most difficult part. You should really think this thru. You probably understand that, at least in the West, these groups are a big business and rival groups will come on posing as members of a ziyarat trip of their competition and will post negative comments. This definitely will happen. How prevalent it will be, Allah Alim, but it will happen. Those comments will stand out, as you said, IF (and this is a big if) those brothers and sisters who had positive experiences will also post comments on your site. There is no guarantee of that. Usually, those who post comments are either two groups, those who had extremely positive experiences and those who had negative experiences (i.e. review bias). The ones who had positive and slightly positive or neutral experiences will most likely not post at all, as they are not required to and they have no incentive to do this. So unless you have a mitigation strategy for this, you will get some extremely positive, some negative, and some highly negative posts and some of the negative posts (x percentage) will not even be real but will be posted by rival groups. This will lead to a skewed and unauthentic view of these groups which does not represent reality, which is not what you want. 

2) If the site catches on, moderation might become timely / involved / complicated. Ask Sis Hameedah about this. lol. Again, you need a strategy to deal with this. 

3) How will the voluntary user verification work. If it is too complicated people won't do it. If it is too simple, it will open a door for 'bad actors', 'bots', etc to get in. Again, you need to think about this. 

4 and 5 sound good. I think you need to develop relationships with legitimate tour groups and possibly generate some revenue thru affiliate relationships and also advertising from legitimate groups. I realize this might put you at risk of seeming biased toward these groups, because you are taking money from them, but most people, including myself would understand and wouldn't be bothered by this IF these groups were legitimate, well established groups who have done many successful ziyarat trips and there are no substantiated allegations of fraud, etc, against these groups. You will need to generate revenue at some point even if it's just to keep the site going. People will volunteer at first, but they will get tired after a while if they are obligated to put in many hours weekly and are not financially compensated for this, FYI, i have been involved in other similar projects to this. 

[Abu Hadi]

On 8/13/2023 at 10:00 AM, notme said:

Is this website for the whole world, or just certain country or countries? 

Since the site is in English, I am assuming it is for those trips originating from UK / Ireland / US / Canada / Australia / New Zealand. Just guessing but I think this is a good guess. 

[Ashvazdanghe]

16 hours ago, Abu Hadi said:

Salam. MashahAllah, very good effort. I will be checking website regularly as I am planning on doing Ziyarat in the near future. A few comments about the above. 

Salam @Haji 2003 previously has created similar topics about his ziarat expreiences which I think it can be very helpful for this new site & anyone who wants to do Zairat in near future InshAllah .

 

 

 

[Guest Ziarat_Info]

17 hours ago, notme said:

Is this website for the whole world, or just certain country or countries? 

 

17 hours ago, Abu Hadi said:

Since the site is in English, I am assuming it is for those trips originating from UK / Ireland / US / Canada / Australia / New Zealand. Just guessing but I think this is a good guess. 

Yes, the idea is that the site is for the whole world to review their local groups, but the content must be in English. It is the international language so we think it is fair to push people to leave their reviews in English.

[Guest Ziarat_Info]

17 hours ago, Abu Hadi said:

Salam. MashahAllah, very good effort. I will be checking website regularly as I am planning on doing Ziyarat in the near future. A few comments about the above. 

Walaikum salam wa rahmatullah, JazakAllah. May Allah call you this year and every year and accept all your ziarat for the sake of your love of the Ahlulbayt (عليه السلام) and reward you immensely, Ilahi alameen  

17 hours ago, Abu Hadi said:

1) The verification / authentication of individuals will be the most difficult part. You should really think this thru. You probably understand that, at least in the West, these groups are a big business and rival groups will come on posing as members of a ziyarat trip of their competition and will post negative comments. This definitely will happen. How prevalent it will be, Allah Alim, but it will happen. Those comments will stand out, as you said, IF (and this is a big if) those brothers and sisters who had positive experiences will also post comments on your site. There is no guarantee of that. Usually, those who post comments are either two groups, those who had extremely positive experiences and those who had negative experiences (i.e. review bias). The ones who had positive and slightly positive or neutral experiences will most likely not post at all, as they are not required to and they have no incentive to do this. So unless you have a mitigation strategy for this, you will get some extremely positive, some negative, and some highly negative posts and some of the negative posts (x percentage) will not even be real but will be posted by rival groups. This will lead to a skewed and unauthentic view of these groups which does not represent reality, which is not what you want. 

Yes. This is something we are actively discussing. 

My idea was to set up a system where users send a scan of their passport & are required to change their username to the name on the passport for them to be a verified member, but this is unrealistic because the logistics around security and data access/ retention of such sensitive information are a major obstacle, plus people are not going to send passport scans to a new website. Maybe in a few years when the site has earned a reputation but not now. 

the second idea, which is the one we are going with, is to open a dispute platform in the background. so if there is an overwhelmingly negative review that seems out of place to our moderators, we will first hide the post and inform the tour group owner & the poster and open a private thread to discuss. If the poster can prove that they were part of that group (emails, messages, screenshots, etc) then the post can remain, however, if no evidence is provided, the post is removed. 

It's clunky and long-winded but it's the best idea we can come up with (open to suggestions if anyone has any better ideas). We can't just nuke all negative comments because they might be true. 

17 hours ago, Abu Hadi said:

2) If the site catches on, moderation might become timely / involved / complicated. Ask Sis Hameedah about this. lol. Again, you need a strategy to deal with this. 

Lol. We might need to start hiring. 

We imagine the majority of activity will be around Ashura/ arbaeen and hajj periods, so the site will probably be quiet between now and the next Ashura. We are not expecting or planning for a large volume of content but if it does get unmanageable, expect a mopey thread from me begging for volunteers lol!

17 hours ago, Abu Hadi said:

4 and 5 sound good. I think you need to develop relationships with legitimate tour groups and possibly generate some revenue thru affiliate relationships and also advertising from legitimate groups. I realize this might put you at risk of seeming biased toward these groups, because you are taking money from them, but most people, including myself would understand and wouldn't be bothered by this IF these groups were legitimate, well established groups who have done many successful ziyarat trips and there are no substantiated allegations of fraud, etc, against these groups. You will need to generate revenue at some point even if it's just to keep the site going. People will volunteer at first, but they will get tired after a while if they are obligated to put in many hours weekly and are not financially compensated for this, FYI, i have been involved in other similar projects to this. 

Yes, you are 100% right. there are a few well-respected groups here that we have used ourselves in the past so we know they are reliable. It's a very slow process, especially since Shia are still in the Muharram period, but we have reached out and asked them to ask their former customers to leave reviews for them on the website. if even a few contribute that would help us massively. 

 

[Guest Ziarat_Info]

1 hour ago, Ashvazdanghe said:

Salam @Haji 2003 previously has created similar topics about his ziarat expreiences which I think it can be very helpful for this new site & anyone who wants to do Zairat in near future InshAllah .

Thank you, If brother @Haji 2003 could add content to our website we would really appreciate it

[Abu Hadi]

The other thing I was thinking of is that you might want to consider posting other content besides reviews. Reviews are good, this is the main thing that people will go to the site for, but there are also other topics that might be interesting and help you generate traffic. Some suggestions, off the top of my head are

1. FAQs for Ziyarat. FAQ for getting a VISA to Iraq / Iran. This would be something very helpful for those from the West, especially reverts or those who are second / third / etc generation from the West and have never traveled to these areas. They should know what the application process is, in a simplified form and in English, and what 'red flags' to look for from a group (for example like what you stated in the beginning of the thread). 

2. Image Carousel on the front page. Each Image could be linked to a brief description, video, etc of each Holy Site and different features within the site (Kabr of Imam Hussein((عليه السلام)), Abdul Fadl Al Abbas((عليه السلام)), Imam Reda((عليه السلام)), etc. 

3. Links to articles written about Ziyarat, it's meaning, and different experiences of the Zuwayr, etc. 

I could think of more, but this is just a quick suggestion. There are lots of travel websites out there. Maybe look at some of these to get ideas. 

[Guest Ziarat_Info]

1 hour ago, Abu Hadi said:

The other thing I was thinking of is that you might want to consider posting other content besides reviews. Reviews are good, this is the main thing that people will go to the site for, but there are also other topics that might be interesting and help you generate traffic. Some suggestions, off the top of my head are

1. FAQs for Ziyarat. FAQ for getting a VISA to Iraq / Iran. This would be something very helpful for those from the West, especially reverts or those who are second / third / etc generation from the West and have never traveled to these areas. They should know what the application process is, in a simplified form and in English, and what 'red flags' to look for from a group (for example like what you stated in the beginning of the thread). 

2. Image Carousel on the front page. Each Image could be linked to a brief description, video, etc of each Holy Site and different features within the site (Kabr of Imam Hussein((عليه السلام)), Abdul Fadl Al Abbas((عليه السلام)), Imam Reda((عليه السلام)), etc. 

3. Links to articles written about Ziyarat, it's meaning, and different experiences of the Zuwayr, etc. 

I could think of more, but this is just a quick suggestion. There are lots of travel websites out there. Maybe look at some of these to get ideas. 

MashaAllah these are all excellent points, I may drop the forum onto ziarat.info/forum and create a few pages like you suggested. That's a really good idea thanks so much brother!  

[Haji 2003]

I put together iranziarat.Com some years ago. Some content is really dated now.

So crowd sourcing material is a good idea.

[Guest Ziarat_Info]

Salam respected brothers @Abu Hadi @Haji 2003 and sister @Hameedeh

We have taken your advice on board and done a complete overhaul of the website. It has a new look and a new layout ziarat.info while the forum has been moved to ziarat.info/forum 

The focus has shifted more to a crowdsourced community hub for all things related to Ziarat. We have made a start with the Resources page where we have begun translating what we believe to be the first fully HTML version of Kamil al ziarat online which will be better for end users than all the PDF versions currently available, as well as an Iraq page, with a start made on the Iraq Ziarat FAQ and Iraq Advice pages.  We should inshaAllah have a start made on a list of all the holy sites in Iraq but there are so, so many beyond Najaf, Karbala, Kazamein, and Samarrah that people do not know about, that it will probably take a while to gather a "full" list. For example, I myself have been over 10 times to Iraq, but this Ashura was the first time I went to masjid Baratha! 

I hope that if any momineen read this and would like to contribute information about any ziarats in Iraq, Saudi, Iran, or Syria it would be very gratefully received and they would be thanked on the website for their contributions with a link to their social media page. 

It's a mammoth task, but InshaAllah it is all in the service of Momineen in the name of the Awaited Imam (عجّل الله تعالى فرجه الشريف) so we will try our best. 

[Abu Hadi]

4 minutes ago, Guest Ziarat_Info said:

Salam respected brothers @Abu Hadi @Haji 2003 and sister @Hameedeh

We have taken your advice on board and done a complete overhaul of the website. It has a new look and a new layout ziarat.info while the forum has been moved to ziarat.info/forum 

The focus has shifted more to a crowdsourced community hub for all things related to Ziarat. We have made a start with the Resources page where we have begun translating what we believe to be the first fully HTML version of Kamil al ziarat online which will be better for end users than all the PDF versions currently available, as well as an Iraq page, with a start made on the Iraq Ziarat FAQ and Iraq Advice pages.  We should inshaAllah have a start made on a list of all the holy sites in Iraq but there are so, so many beyond Najaf, Karbala, Kazamein, and Samarrah that people do not know about, that it will probably take a while to gather a "full" list. For example, I myself have been over 10 times to Iraq, but this Ashura was the first time I went to masjid Baratha! 

I hope that if any momineen read this and would like to contribute information about any ziarats in Iraq, Saudi, Iran, or Syria it would be very gratefully received and they would be thanked on the website for their contributions with a link to their social media page. 

It's a mammoth task, but InshaAllah it is all in the service of Momineen in the name of the Awaited Imam (عجّل الله تعالى فرجه الشريف) so we will try our best. 

MashahAllah ! May Allah (سُبْحَانَهُ وَ تَعَالَى) give you the Taufiq. Very nice. I haven't had a chance to look at it fully yet. I will get to it later once I have more time. My initial impressions are that it looks 100% better. 

[ireallywannaknow]

On 8/14/2023 at 3:06 PM, Haji 2003 said:

I put together iranziarat.Com some years ago. Some content is really dated now.

So crowd sourcing material is a good idea.

Oh that was you?? I literally just came across that site a week ago looking for ziarat info and benefitted from it, so thanks. For some reason I thought the author was a woman. 

[Ashvazdanghe]