Sep 11, 2005 09:12 PM
1883 Views
(Updated Sep 11, 2005 09:12 PM)
Why I Write This: I am not a regular RRC-er on MS. I am more close to RRC B’lore ;-) Still I wud like to share few thoughts on this. In fact a recent incident made me think about RRC. It went like this. I post a certain revu, as usual MS accepts the Revu & shows a blood stained Revu back ..one with spelling mistakes. I ignore it & go home to see my Revu appear on homepage. It is there. I click to see how it looks & what I see left me speechless. Already a member had read & rated it as VU! [Name withheld to protect his/her identity & to protect myself ;-)] now the time elapsed between me posting, seeing the blood-stained copy, & then going home page, opening the Revu may be – 10 SECONDS. Revu was abt 7500 char long, to read it in 10 seconds NEEDS some effort. Add to it my spelling mistakes, hidden humor etc which doesn’t make it any easy to understand. Thou my mind thanked the very 1st reader for VU rating, my heart said there was something wrong. At best the reader wud only have read the joke I said in the beginning of revu. That made me think ‘how n why do ppl do RRC on MS’. I guess everyone has a reason or motive!
it is good when someone rates my Revu as VU, but it has to be only after thorough reading. In the above case I felt let down bcos I had spent abt 2hrs writing it up & a friend declares it VU in 10 seconds, 99% without reading. In my opinion even if someone is in my TC I shud only rate/comment only after reading n vice versa. I agree most ppl are doing it right but somehow I see few who have got the concept of RRC a bit wrong. Though author of few scribblings on MS, n fewer RRC I wud like to give my suggestions abt RRC. They are mostly based on my little experience here n the way I do it.
Reading: what to read: preferably read only what interests you or abt a product u are looking for. you can also read ppl who u think are intresting to read. don’t read just for the sake of reading or just for the sake of ms points. Put simply one doesn’t have to read everything posted on MS. For ex as I rarely watch movies, there is no use for me to read on a murder/jism/barsaat as these are products I am not going to see/buy.
how to read – I read from left to right, top to bottom, word by word making it sentence by sentence, then para by para,. I know its obvious.. lol is anyone following a different method? Read attentively, don’t just rush thru/scroll thru.
When 2 read: read at ur own time, make sure its within the 24hrs of a day lol. Good if u can read when u have nothing else on ur mind, u can read n grasp better. No drunken reading plz.
Why to read: ask urselves why am I reading this? ;-) Shud I just read it for the sake of reading? Rate n comment it just for points? or just bcos the writer is in my TC?
Where 2 Read: read it on MS, at a theatre screen ..err PC monitor screen near u ;-)
Rating: is a feedback thru which u can tell MS(or writer) how useful the Revu was. MS allows 4 possible rating ie VU,U,SU,NU. My law here is ‘just as I don’t hav to read all on MS, I don’t have to rate everything I read, rate only after u hav read it with purpose if it really helped u’. I personally feel very few revu deserves to be rated NU, at least considering the effort. even a dead clock shows right time twice a day, a revu may hav something good abt it, may be we have missed it. Its better not to rate than NU. one quote I use often is ‘Don’t lie abt urself, but be careful before telling truth abt others’ so I stop myself from giving NU just thinking the writer may feel discouraged if not mature enough.
Writer’s view of rating Actually a mature writer never bothers abt the rating bcos he knows he has done his best. Sometimes I don’t rate thinking what if the writer is immature enough to take it personally. My job is made easy bcos I read on few categories, the lesser u read, the beter it is, & better u can rate. My suggestion to writers wud be u know how gud u have done, so don’t take ratings personally bcos there will always be ppl who thought ur revu was VU but cudnt rate as they were not logged in ( my case mostly I login when MS says ‘u cant go further without login’) or there are ppl who didn’t read revu proper but still rated VU, or ppl who took the diplomatic stance n didn’t rate. Be encouraged by honest ratings n decide not to be discouraged by poor ratings bcos there is more to life than ratings on MS. Sometimes u do ur best still ppl give u a SU or NU.
How 2 Rate Here I think of ‘beauty is in the eyes of the beholder’, there wil be cases of beholder(reader) being color blind n hence missing the beauty of ur revu. Also as a reader I cant say ‘sugar isn’t sweet’ just bcos my tastebuds arent working. I have to read n rate when my tastebuds are working meaning I shud be in fair balanced approach when I am reading. Rating is relative, the same revu may be VU to one, NU to other. I take a lot of things into consideration before I rate viz relevance to topic, clarity of thought, organization of revu, fairness in approach, language, humor, stories, anecdotes, examples, etc. Being selective in reading I am happy I mostly had to give VU so far n thankful to reader who have been encouraging in giving me mostly VU ;-). Put simply rate based on quality of writing, baaki sab maaya hain.. kahin dhoop hain to kahin chaaya hain!
Comments are a feedback mechanism next to rating. They give a personal touch as it allows every reader to share thoughts with writer, rest of MS. Here reader has the liberty to express his thought abt the revu in text, to congratulate writer etc. Comments I guess have contributed a lot to community building on MS. But equally comments at times hav been overused/misused/abused too. Often it’s a case of too many comments on a revu spoiling the commentary. I saw a revu which had 75 comments on it, but when I went thru them I found at least 30 of them were ‘also ran’. A comment ideally shud add at least a thought 2 the topic. If u are simply wanting to say ‘good’ u have alredy done it thru VU rating. Use comments only if u have a thought abt topic or a word of advice/encouragement to writer. Plz don’t use comments to say only hi, bye bcos others also have to read it n find nothing in it.
Make sure your comments hav some words to the writer, ur thoughts abt revu, ur thought abt topic/product, n more over be brief. Why I say comments shud add value to revu is, imagine this: revu is the rice n sambhar, comments are like pickle adding taste, so like pickles comments shud be small in comparision with revu, will u eat pickle as the main food n rice as side dish? Like pickle comment though small shud make revu more enjoyable. (I know it’s a poor allegory, that doesn’t mean u throw eggs, tomatoes on to ur monitor lol) If u have too many thoughts u can very well come up with a revu. I Immediately recall RV81, rohit, shankar, crosswire, venkysiva, techwriter, kvijay n many more (u know ur names lol) who always have comments that contribute to the topic
2 concludemake good, just n judicious use of MS Reading, rating n commenting. Let these be such that they add something to the topic, encourage/correct the writer. Ideally each shud have his own guidelines abt RRCing, follow urs. don’t do these as obligation or motivated by points bcos there is more to MS than just mspoints & more to life than MS. keep RRCing ;-)
