Good'uns, Bad'uns and Naughty Boys. Review on Is MouthShut Justified in Banning Its Members

== Terminology ==

Let us categorize members on MouthShut into two broad classes: Good’uns and Bad’uns. The Good’uns are those who have been involved with nothing out of the way whatsoever and therefore have absolutely no reason to be tried for anything. The Bad’uns are those who have done something, or have been suspected for doing something, and therefore are either being tried for something, or are borderline cases. Among the Bad’uns, we have two categories. The ones that can be given a second chance (let’s call them Naughty Boys) and those who just cannot be allowed to remain (let’s call them Kick Me’s).

== Bad’uns ==

Bad’uns can be people who have done a number of things. You can have people with several multiple IDs floating about, people who have written reviews in bad taste, abused others, violated copyrights, harassed people from the MouthShut office or intentionally conspired to stir this place unfavorably. Unfortunately, the way we have defined the “Bad’uns”, we must also include those who haven’t necessarily done it, but are suspected for doing so. They form a third class of “Bad’uns” called “But ‘Twas Not Me!”. Usually you can spot a “But ‘Twas not Me!” from the rest and justice is done.

DID you know?

Juggernaut belongs to the “But ‘Twas Not Me!” category?

DID you know?

In December 2004, someone opened up IDs “Juggernaut_”, “mnc123_” and “mariner2_” to malign the reputations of Juggernaut, mnc123, mariner2 and did so quite successfully, until it all came up and the racket was busted.

== Naughty Boys ==

Often you find unlikely people doing unimaginable things. There are people who suddenly get it into their head to target someone in particular—a member on the site, a particular celebrity, a country or a religion or something like that. Then there are others who feel to inhibited to express a certain opinion of theirs straight up, but do want to write it up at the same time—they think a multiple ID is the best solution. Then there are those who have a disagreement with someone and exchange verbose e-mail messages with each other, saying the darnedest things.. A sudden, unwarrantable explosion of improper activity to exact a certain cause characterizes Naughty Boys, subsiding the moment it is over, never to repeat again. This isn’t exactly a good thing—but pardonable, with a good enough warning issued. There is no reason whatsoever to flag or ban them and doing so is certainly not justified.

DID you know?

Juggernaut and Criminal are both Naughty Boys because one review from Juggernaut (explaining the damned purpose of religion) and two reviews from Criminal (one on religion and the other I could not read before it was yanked off, though I’ve heard it had absolutely nothing bad in it) had been judged “provocative” and removed from the site. Who dares ban them, though?

Naughty Boys however can be further categorized. We’ve talked about the first one—the ones who suddenly get something into their head, do something crazy, and then give it up. But then there are those who do something crazy all right, get a warning for it, but continue to do so after the warning is issued. This second class belongs typically to those who’ve been warned for multiple IDs, who stop using all of them but for one. Members of this class are borderline cases, to be observed carefully, without banning them.

DID you know?

There are an amazingly large number of members active just now who were under a different ID a few months ago, some of who have confessed publicly (nelsaan for instance uses the ID quosmio now). Then there are others who have admittedly opened fake accounts but continue to remain active today, like vishal_is_billa who writes under the ID spoil_yourself today?

There is another class of people out here on the site that use this place as a forum to meet their probable “dates”. I’m not going to name anybody whosoever in this category, but instances of people who have e-mailed others with this intention are many, some mild, while some not mild in the least. If people become a little more puritan, we can get this problem off air as well. Care must be taken, of course, that before complaining against someone like this, the complainant must have very strong reason to justify his/her claims of harassment.

== Kick Me’s ==

In my honest opinion, there are a good number of people belonging to this class who are moving about Scott free, some without any warning or punishment (public in nature) whatsoever. It includes people who write junk reviews—reviews that convey nothing at all about the subject, make no good reading, and are often in bad taste. Then there are those who start up an ID on the site only to distrust people, write disgusting comments to them and assign Not Useful ratings with very nasty justifications. Furthermore, there are members who have written very overtly abusive and defamatory reviews in the past—some of those reviews were taken away, but some weren’t. Some of such writers are still lurking around. Everyone of this class needs to go just now!

DID you know?

Aslinaqli (banned early 2004) had written reviews in horrible taste, disrespecting women, with sexually offensive language in tow as well, but was not banned or warned for more than a month and a half—there is another member Ghaznavi who also has been very openly and frankly abusive towards a dozen others, but has not been yanked off air. Another nuisance by the ID love2hate2love had remained unfazed on this site for over 96 hours, in spite of reviews that were so abusive, that the reader could puke in his chair reading it. Some of his works are still on air.

Another kind of members belonging to the Kick Me’s class is the one that start up fake IDs (legions of them in some cases) to distrust someone, assign not-useful ratings, to bring down that person’s image, unfairly. Some IDs are made specifically to distrust others and are not used for anything whatsoever apart from that. They are consuming a chunk of space here, and we could do with it emptied up as quickly as we can.

DID you know?

The target of such fake-IDs, or pointless IDs are usually the “more popular” members on this website.

I could go on and on. But I’ll stop here. I don’t want to indulge in arguing, “ban him” and “don’t ban him” just now. but I am sure my review has given you enough food-for-thought and you have indeed concluded what I intended to convey. Do comment