The court is set. The audience has been seated. The Prosecuting Attorney (PA) and the Defending Attorney (DA) are in position. The topic: “Is Mouthshut (MS) justified in banning its members?”
The Judge Orders.. “Prosecution may please begin”!!!
PA: Your honor, today we are ad a very critical juncture at MS. MS has been banning its members and deleting their reviews. Hence, today we are here to prove, how unjustified and unfair has MS been towards its patrons. I am going to divide this into three parts as they are interlinked yet separate issues.
Is MS justified in deleting reviews?
Is MS justified in banning its members?
Is MS justified in doing the second without doing the first.
I would request the DA to make his opening statement.
DA: Your honor, I totally agree with the classification given by my able friend here. However, I am going to prove, how MS has done what is best for its other members, patrons and society at large.
PA: Looking at the first offense made by MS. I believe that there is no doubt whatsoever that MS is totally at fault for deleting the reviews. The members take so much of hardship and pain to write the reviews and post them. But MS promptly deletes them. Is this what you call as paying for patronage?
DA: Objection Your Honor. My friend here is trying to make it sound as if all the reviews of the members are deleted. Rather, if we look at the number of reviews that are deleted, it will form a small percentage (10% in my opinion), out of which most are junk, substandard, biased, provoking or offensive.
PA: My friend, now you are trying to make it sound as if all the reviews fall into the above categories.
DA: Not at all my friend. On the contrary, if you look at the reviews that have been deleted of late, many of them belong to categories like copyright violation (remember.. someone copy-pasted from Indian Idol’s website and called it as his review?), junk (Like someone writing about her frustrations on not being married under the heading “Ministry of Education”), offensive (towards a social class, gender, religion etc) and irrelevant (Like people writing one line for a review and going on writing junk to complete the minimum words).
PA: I agree on these cases. You are picking on the cases of gross violation only. What about the many reviews marked as VU and then they being deleted?
DA: MS is a site that needs to pay for its survival (in terms of employees, infrastructure etc). It can afford to pay only if the site is popular. Hence, if it is deleting a review marked “VU”, there must be a valid reason behind it.
PA: Reason or no reason… we all know that once a review is deleted, we never come to know why and how. So MS is definitely at fault on this account.
DA: I agree on your viewpoint. Probably it will be easier to say that let MS share at the community forum why a particular review was deleted. If the same is very sensitive and can not be shared in public, let an M2M go to the reviewer with the details. Again, it may not be possible to send M2M to all the reviews deleted. Probably, only those reviews, which do not fall to the categories of plagiarism, copy right violation, irrelevant, junk or offensive/ vulgar and in addition, have been rated Useful or VU… only in such cases, reasons need to be shared.
PA: But how can you call a particular review “irrelevant”? Referring to the case of “Wear your glasses” (Munnaim), where his review was deleted 3 times, was it justified? All he did was, while posting reviews on 5 “Non Archie Comics” (Like Josie, Sabrina etc), he called it as Archie Comics – II.
DA: To some extent I do agree that MS was a bit harsh on him. However, his review was retained after he changed his title to “Five Best Books – From Archie Brigade”.
PA: Again, there have been cases when people post reviews on a “somewhat relevant category” if the real category is not available. But after the real category comes up, the original review is deleted, along with comments. What about that? (The original review of Swaraj Mishra on Amrish Puri was deleted along with 20+ comments as it was posted under “Five Best Villains”. The author posted the review again after the right category came up, but the comments were lost.)
DA: As per the rules of MS, an author has to request for a category with mouthpad. It was not done in the above case. However, it will be advisable for MS to restore the comments section when the new review comes up again as the authors don’t keep copy of the comments.
PA: You honour, me and my friend here seem to have some kind of consensus on the topic. Hence I would like to move to the second topic.
DA: I agree.
PA: Is MS Justified in banning its members? Probably yes, probably no. But is MS justified in all its bans so far? Definitely NO.
DA: Your honor, no one can be justified for all the actions taken yet. Again, we must look at the categories which are being banned. First let me talk of the categories, which all my level headed friends here will agree. I support banning of members for offensive/ junk/ blasphemy/ vulgar reviews, in spite of reminders.
PA: I also agree…. Provided, the “several reminders” do not come in a single day and the ban happens also on the same day. Essentially, there needs to be a lead time between the series of reminders, so that the member can improve upon his style. In the mean time, his reviews can be deleted. But how do you classify members who are banned for offensive M2M and member harassment?.
DA: I find these as just causes for a ban. After all, MS is here because of its members. How can it tolerate such behavior?
PA: does not the same logic of warning and lead time apply here? Probably, in such cases, the member’s M2M should be banned first, then the comments section and finally the authority to read/ write a review, if this behaviour continues.
DA: But does MS have the bandwidth to do all these?
PA: MS having bandwidth is not the problem of its members.
DA: Lets look at it more logically. How many such cases come up? Not many. So once such an offence is created, MS should put an “alert” on the behaviours of such a member and the same can be observed. It does not require going to every member’s page and spying on them. The same applies to repeated plagiarism and third party copyright violation.
(Continued in Comments Section)
