I am a month old at MS and I already have a fair idea of how the website’s community functions, it’s many pluses and few minuses. Here then are a few of my learnings so far, so the newcomer to

MS is benefited and can cut his learning curve by more than half. Please note that review is confined to the MS community and how it functions and not on MS, the website.

1. THE PLAGIARISTS
You can identify them when their language becomes inconsistent: when perfectly grammatical sentences become anything but grammatical. When a few of their reviews get the ’Not useful’ tag by fellow MS users, it could sometimes be a sign of a plagiarist.

2. REVENGE RATERS
This species has just one principle: give and take. If you give them good reviews, they will reciprocate. If you give them bad reviews albeit honestly, they will get back at you and rate your reviews ’Not useful’ even if they are ’very useful’.

3. BIASED BRIGADE
This species is as narrow minded as it gets. Stubborn and always wanting to have its way, it will use any means possible -- public/private messages, abusive comments, bad ratings -- to get its presence felt. If this species loves an X product and your review is against him/her, this tribe will rip you apart in their comments and ratings, no matter how reasonable your review was.

4. ATTENTION SEEKERS
This species may not really score in writing great reviews, but it does a good job of extracting attention by sending ’Thank you for rating my review’ to people who do, to commenting on just about anyone who write a review on MS. They really mine the network like nobody else. Great assets for any community site in that sense.

5. GUEST ARTISTS
This species never writes reviews for months and years together. Relies on those very first reviews done by it and then stops any form of activity on the site. You could even call them Retired Early.

6. RATING DEMONS
This species never writes a review but revels in rating on just about anything on the site to tote up their MS points (it’s an ego boost, you see). Some of their ratings are spot on, but most are meant to please people and not really honest. It’s the you-kiss-my-ass and i-will-kiss-yours variety out here.

7. THE ELITE
This species has an air of being a supreme reviewer and looks down on anyone who can’t write a word of English correctly. But this species is least harmful. It sticks to its clique and never comments on reviewers who don’t measure up to their standards.

8. HELPERS
This species is the best of the lot. They not only write and review reasonably well but also help out the rest of their community with helpful hints on who are the good reviewers and what to do for maximum readership and so on.

9. CLIQUES
This tribe is very exclusivist, will only stick to its group of reviewers. They rate, comment and so on like it’s some private chatroom. This is good and bad. Good because it’s a meeting of like-mined people and bad because the others (some of whom could be good) arn’t benefitted.

10. HOLISTIC WRITERS
This tribe not only rates, comments but also writes ’useful’ and ’very useful’ reviews consistently. It prides on originality and never compromises on quality. But ofcourse, it’s not as quantitative as the bad writers.

PS: IF YOU KNOW OF MANY MORE SPECIES, DO MENTION THEM IN THE COMMENTS SECTION... LETS ALL SHARE OUR EXPERIENCES...