If you read then give a rating. Review on Rating Reviews on MouthShut

Writing a review in Mouthshut is a wonderful experience even when I have had an experience of writing in the News Paper and magazines. Why?

The interaction with other members is personal, one-to-one and lively compared to a very dry reaction or no interaction from the readers at all in a News Paper or magazines. Here the interaction is on two fronts. One the comment. And another the rating. In certain web sites like software web sites you have the option of rating but these ratings surprisingly you won't even see them again and in no away it reaches the author. It is (in their sites) strictly for their internal consumption as ''feed back'' to digest and advance on some other new idea.

In Mouthshut you have a very visible rating system so that not only the author will know but you can gauge yourself against others rating on the same review.

This will give you a wonderful insight in to how others think about the same review. You may question yourself as to why your perception is different. You may always think that you are correct (most people do that) but you are exposed yourself with a rating.

I think one should rate the review the moment one reads the review.

Reading again is different for each individual soul. I do agree on that. But I want to tell you what voracious readers say about reading. I myself can not survive without reading something. A reader and an intense reader at that would easily see the author before his mind's eye. He could easily see the brain working behind those words he or she is reading. The moment one achieves this one should know that one has become a good reader. If you do not undergo this experience then you should cultivate proper methods of reading. It need not be a fiction where you can see the author (in your imagination) explaining a story to you. It can be essays or it can be a technical white paper. It is just the same. You would see the author's brain and the way it was working all the while you were reading his review.

A rating is a must. If you have really read something then what is that stopping you to push that button to tell your opinion ?

It is surprising and also disheartening to see the number of readers of your review nearly 70 (in Mouth shut you can see the readers profile) and the one who rated may be three or four or may be six. What nonsense is this?

If someone is so absent minded as to write a comment but forgot to rate, you can understand it. Such a thing can happen.

I strictly believe that reading someone's review and hiding the face by not giving a rating is thankless job on the part of the reader on MS because such a feature like rating is available.

I write reviews regularly and find many a time the percentage of those who rate the review to those who read it is about 5 percent or less. Sometimes my mailbox is full with about 40 mails but about one or two comments and may be 3 or 4 ratings which work out to 10 percent. But when the readers themselves are less the rating percentage goes down drastically.

What stops readers to rate a review?

I can not find many reasons or I may be at a loss to understand. If you think they are unable to decide it means they have not read it properly. If they are new to MS it is possible they might have ignored or as yet not understood the importance. I myself in the very beginning of first few days did not understand the importance of awarding a rating.

Rating a review will help other readers among them even the most casual ones to decide to read or not to read. By giving a rating you are also helping the MS website to understand which are really good reviews in the eyes of the readers and encourage the author and help the MS management.

If you do not want to award the rating because you already know what type of writer he or she was then there is no point of reading those reviews!!

If you find that you have wasted your precious time by reading non-sense review written in lighter vein on serious subject (for example depression, crime against woman, stress etc.,) then do not hesitate to give ''NOT USEFUL'' rating. You may think you may hurt the feelings of the author. You may also worry that the same author may retaliate by giving the same to your review. Do not worry after all you do not lose anything and ''it does not matter''. In my case I found that whenever I gave only ''useful'' the author would retaliate by giving the same level of rating to my reviews. These things do not worry me as long as the readers whom I hold in high esteem and those I consider as good readers give me good rating.

A “not useful” rating should not be considered as a worthless review even by the one who rated it. It may be because of irrelevance of the review to the subject matter , a reader might give “not useful” rating.

When I gave ''not useful'' (only two I gave) Mouthshut asks me to explain. Good. That is good. But when someone put “I do not trust this person'' to my profile, Mouth shut software engine is not designed to ask any explanation. Personal grudge should not have any place here.