----{{{{ UnDeR RaTeD }}}}----. Review on Rating Reviews on MouthShut

Tina Mary Frank was a normal schoolgirl who tied her hair in two plated pony tails with ribbons of matching colors with her blouse at school. One day she wrote an essay for her teacher. It was not a part of class work assignment. She had written it out of her own initiative. She thought she was a budding writer. Tina's teacher took the essay from her promising to read it by evening and tell her about it the next day.

The teacher had not read the essay the next morning.

Three days passed. Tina's teacher completely forgot about the essay. Every morning she would hopefully skip up to his desk in the staff room during lunch break and ask him what he thought about it. Each morning, the teacher made an apology and an excuse and a disheartened but well-behaved Tina would walk out dispirited from the room.

The essay was never read. Tina never knew if her teacher liked it. She never wrote an essay again in her life. She was devastated.

Four years later, she changed schools. In her new school, her new English teacher grew fond of her because she always felt curious about why she was always silent. Tina's new English teacher called her two days later and set her a task to write an essay about her old school. At first, Tina refused to accept the assignment but the teacher was deft and she persuaded Tina to write an essay within a week.

Three weeks later, Tina was ready with her essay. It was just a few words that made only one sentence. But it was far more valuable and several times more disturbing than any number of pages that you or I could write. She wrote:

*                                                       They never cared.

*Tina's story ends here.

Unaware of the effect his casual omission had had on poor little Tina, her old school master of English found a new pet in his school. This time his favorite was a boy called Arvind. Arvind was fond of his writing and he wrote an essay on just about everything. Arvind never showed it to the teacher directly but instead read it out to his friends and gloated in the applause his readings drew from his awestruck classmates. The schoolteacher, quite influenced by Arvind's easy grace and quick charm, gave him an open complement during class.

Arvind knew it had nothing to do with his essays. Arvind never called him 'sir'. And he made his friends swear to him, never to let the teacher know when he had written a new essay.

Arvind's story ends here. But I'm afraid, the blundering school master may have created quite a few stories even after that!

*= = =

*It should not matter to my reader if the stories above are true or false. For all you know, these can be fabricated illustrations or, put less politely, "fairy tales" that I created purely for the sake of explaining myself better. I am trying to draw your attention to two points that will be central to my take on rating reviews in general. I will refrain from making comments on practices prevalent on MouthShut in this respect. Instead, I will indulge in a normative, theoretical discussion of what is good and what is bad.

I have read a few reviews earlier and the points they highlight are simply vital. It is important to read the review before giving it a rating. It is important to rate the review only after forming a fair judgment. It is also important to justify your rating if it deviates from what seems the most obvious recourse.

I disagree on one account with a lot of my fellow members. I have found people say something like this. Many times people rate reviews only because lots of other people have rated the review in the same way. I disagree because I believe that some reviews have an obvious fate. It will be highly awkward for someone to rate me Not Useful here for trying to propogate my own storytelling abilities. As you can plainly see, the stories serve as illustrations and not as brand building. More often than not, the general trend is the correct trend. So it is difficult, if not impossible, to say if the rating was just or if the rating was blind.

Consequently, any discussion on those accounts will follow two trajectories. One, they may turn out to be angry outbursts against people rating such reviews highly (or lowly) that you have rated lowly (or highly) because others did so too. I reject this trajectory because although you are entitled to your opinion about everything that still does not mean you are right on that account. The second trajectory is that of pure academical discussions. Should people rate like that? Is it wrong? Who does it harm? How does it harm them? I consider this trajectory useless on this occassion because it has been followed umpteen number of times before.

Instead, I want to highlight to central rules of the thumb that I believe are essential. Anybody who is interested in rating a review in the correct way should know and follow these rules. The first rule is the lesson we learn from Tina's example.

Your ratings matter. It is highly unlikely and almost impossible for people to write purely for themselves. Obviously, the intention is to secure feedback from people. I refuse to accept arguments in this respect saying that people write here just for themselves. They are untrue, boastful and loudmouth. People who write for themselves do so in a diary that they hide in their wardrobe. They don't write on MouthShut. Consequently, your rating matters to the writer. I said this in my earlier review-- The Review is a part of a communication process between the writer and the reader. Consequently, rating is a personal feedback that the reader gives to the writer. It must therefore be given with as much care as one would take while writing an e-mail message.

The second point I want to highlight is the lesson we learn from Arvind's story.

Do not praise what you do not know. It is unwise to assign any rating (VU/U/SU/NU) if you do not know what has been written. By "know" I imply "understand". Even if you have read the review, if you are unsure about how well you have understood it then you will do better to ask for explanation than assign a low rating. It is no shame or crime to not understand. It is shameful and criminal to cry foul over your incomprehension.

What I am saying is not very easy to put in a single summary sentence but I will make efforts. My central contention is that a review is a part of a communication cycle. Consequently, the review constitutes only one half of the whole picture. The other half is how you rate it and how you comment on it. The reviewer is not the only painter. You have one big brush in your hand as well.

Use it well. And don't forget... even if you're just a dot in the picture... you're still there.

You don't want to muck it up, do you?

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