Rating DOES Matter. Review on Rating Reviews on MouthShut

Rating *DOES Matter. *

After having reviewed and rated about 3328 members reviews -(I got this number from my profile page under Account Summary(My MS Points) and qualified by super! – wonder what that  means? - this is what started me to think about writing this review.

As a writer of reviews on this site, I normally switch on the flag for reading and rating of my reviews. For each review I notice who has read it, who has rated and who has commented and noticed a general trend which is presented before you as “The State of the Rating System”.

I believe that the Rating System, as designed by the creators of this site, is excellent. There are some issues with its interpretation and implementation.

Findings:

(Summarized below are some of my observations.)

# 1. Reading is secondary to Rating

Reviews are being rated without being read. Had MS implemented a time stamp at the end of the members’ name, many would have been caught red-handed for rating reviews at the speed of the Internet unless they have obtained some super specialization in speed reading.

# 2. Follow, follow and follow

Follow the crowd mentality is rampant. It is as if one reads the review makes an opinion and then wipes it clean and before rating looks at who has rated what and then rates accordingly rather than focusing on the topic being discussed.

# 3. All those who Read do not Rate.

# 4. Majority of those who Rate do not Comment.

# 5. There is still ambiguity of the rating scale of HR, R, SR and NR.

Suggestions:

If I were to improve the interpretation and implementation of the current rating system, here are some of my thoughts and suggestions:

# 1. The current rating scale of HR, R, SR and NR are adequate and helps to evaluate the quality of the reviews taking into consideration factors like information content and presentation style.

# 2. Replace the current system of displaying names of the raters with a count(only for reviews of others). Instead of displaying m1, m2, m3 under HR, just say 3 under HR. This will hopefully address the herd mentality and remove any prejudices and biases.

# 3. Continue the current display of names for the writers’ own reviews. As a writer, I would like to know the rating by my fellow Msians.

# 4.  The current comments system is adequate.  (I believe that if the names of the raters is not displayed, it will prompt members to leave comments).

# 5. Rating and Commenting should be done on the same screen.

# 6. A comment screen should automatically be popped after rating a review. The member has two options - either leave a comment or close the window. I am betting that a majority will leave comments which would help the writer.

# 7. The rating screen should automatically pop-up after a review is read – even though the reader has the choice to close the window and not rate if he/she chooses at least the system is making an attempt to capture the rating which is fair to the writer.

# 8. If not already being done, I would recommend two sets of exception reports for MS:

List of members who are rating at the speed of light – this is a clear indication that reviews are not being read.

List of members who read but do not rate.

Based on the exception report and trend, MS can send friendly warning messages to the members.

# 9. Qualify the rating system further as follows:

Highly Recommended (very informative and well presented)

Recommended (adequate information)

Somewhat Recommend (lacked information)

Not Recommended (waste of time)

Currently, I follow these qualifications while rating.

Work in Progress:

The above are some of my initial thoughts on the subject. According to me, this is still Work in Progress.

Reading is Important

Rating Does Matter

Comments are Appreciated.