Leaked out... Review on General Thoughts About MouthShut

Hi guys,

Directly on, no time-wasting done here:

FOR MEMBERS

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Reading

1. Why do you write reviews? For members to read them. Why do others write reviews? For you to read them. So make reading a habit. If not all, atleast be active in reading. So if Tanu wants her reviews to be read, she should read reviews too. Simple give and take policy this is.

   
   




2. Don’t just concentrate on reviews by popular members. Take interest in newbies too. After all, they are the future of this site. Even Rajeev was a newcomer once. You need to keep that in mind. Just as the Indian team is giving chances to youngsters, the same policy is to be followed at MS as well. Also, read on the products you want info on, irrespective of who has written it.

   
   




3. What next? For more information, Chandra should go ahead and read my review on ’’Reading Reviews on MouthShut’’ ;-)

   
   

P.S. To increase readership, why not target one particular topic or member each day, and read all the work on it?

Rating

1. Rating should be given a priority. After all, after reading the full review, what problem does the reader have just pressing a button to rate it? I find many reviews with 100+ member hits, but less than even 30 ratings. I feel rating atleast 75% of the reviews read should be made mandatory, else the user shouldn’t be allowed to read. However, there are times when rating is useless, like on reviews which have ’’I do not like this product’’ written a 100 times. So Anuj bhai, such reviews are best avoided.

   
   




2. What should the ratings be based on? Review or the product? This is one big controversial subject. But for my knowledge, it’s the review that should be rated. MS clearly says - ’’How useful was this review to you?’’. So if Arundhati has well justified her stand on not liking a product, give her a VU, though you may have loved each feature of the product in question.

   
   




3. At times, you come across reviews by new members which just manages to pass 400 words, but they considerably justify their liking/disliking a particular product. Fulfilling the purpose of the site, they have done their job to enlighten consumers.. a VU for that straightaway. But if the same came from Pras, a SU would be in the offing.

   
   

P.S. To increase the no. of ratings assigned, how about rating comments as well? :D

Commenting and Writing

1. Don’t you all like comments? Doesn’t Ashi love comments? Yeah! We all do that. Commenting on reviews is not a must, but becomes a must if you strongly feel something about the review. Also, besides encouraging newcomers, it also provides an objectivity as of where the writer excelled in the review, and in what parts does he need to improve. Comments shouldn’t be biased, and replies to it by reviewers is necessary, whether in the section itself or by M2M, doesn’t matter.

   
   




2. Write useful stuff Ankita. 150 words is no review. Any proper one will have atleast 1000 words or something. MS has a good policy of 8000 characters (which reduced to 7100 due to ASCII codes). It enables the writer to write crisper reviews, editing all the unnecessary portions.

   
   




3. Aiming for the ’’Me 1st: Me me me’’ type of comments is fun for Rohit, and for others too. It’s enjoyable! Being first to comment is a great achievement :)

   
   

P.S. For increasing the no. of comments, aim for doing plain timepass in the review, and when it exceeds the 8000-character limit, proceed the important part to the Comments section.

Miscellaneous observations

1. Some derive pleasure in distrusting others, rating NU and leaving behind unjustified comments. So Anusha, follow one policy for such: Ignore them.

   
   




2. Don’t bother yourself too much about the rating and comments you will get. Just write what is required and leave the rest to Lyla!

   
   




3. Topics like this are mostly targeted by those celebrating their 50th or the 100th review, and aLi is no exception !

   
   

P.S. The P.S.’s and member names are nonsensical stuff, and I am not liable for any damages caused by following them herein.

FOR MOUTHSHUT

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1. No topics should be created beforehand. Whether it be cell phones which are yet to be launched in the market, or movies which have not hit the screens. A few members have the habit of posting previews in the review section. Many a time, expectation leads to disappointment 9This Diwali releases, barring Garam Masala], while a few low-profile ones turn out to be the dark horse [Iqbal]. So writing a (p)review before watching the movies serves no purpose. Right Prasidddha?

   
   




2. The ’’Contests’’ should be made more realistic. Most of them roam around writing reviews. Write a minimum of 10 reviews, and Sachien would get a prize. Why so? Is there a dearth of reviews out here, so as to rely on contests? Of all of them that I came across after I joined, I just liked the recent Weekend Contest, and applaud MS for declaring most less-known members as the winners.

   
   




3. The ’’Star Writer’’ bit is a big controversy. The rules that are applied have been in use since May 2001. But where’s the application? While once-in-a-blue-moon kinds are flashed on the home page every now and then, deserving ones like Mayank are left out of its orbit. Also, there’s no identity of a SW. IT’s only when you see them on the homepage do you realize the fact. If flagged members have a unique identity, don’t SW’s deserve that on the profile page?

   
   

4.The method of banning members on a few basis is very superficial. Two persons CAN use one computer [sharing the same IP] and even one member can have more than one ID, provided he doesn’t use it. Also, as I read in a review, dunno which, on an inaction, only the particular segment of the user must be banned, and not the entire ID blocked. Like, if a member is guilty of member harassment and sending abusive M2M’s, only the M2M feature should be disabled. Can anyone tell was Suyog banned?

5. The ’Review of the Day’ technique is just too bad. Reviews written in 2000 are labelled as the ROD in 2005. Instead, the entire concept should be amended. Regularly, the reviews written today should be put in as the ROD tomorrow. Like, a review written on 16th should be the ROD of 17th, on 17th of 18th and so on. This will also encourage members to write quality reviews regularly. I suppose Jaideep will agree with me on this one.

1. The ’’Member News’’ is as good as absent. One hardly checks that section.

   
   




2. The ’’Compare Products’’ serves in the interests of members, but is outdated now. The prices are the old ones, and many new products are missing.

   
   




3. The space to write comments is too small. Though it doesn’t affect the writer, it looks odd.

   
   




4. The SORT technology of MS is out of my understanding. Be it the ’Hot Reviews’ section or the ’Hall of Fame’ one, this baffles me. While I find useless stuff in the HR section for as long as a month, a great review disappears from it within a day or two.

   
   




5. One cannot copy-paste reviews written on MS at IE, but on Mozilla Firefox, it can be done. To conserve the member reviews, this needs to be taken care of.

   
   

P.S. There is no P.S. here.

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© Aliasgar Poonawala, 2005