I have been a member of MS for almost 5 months now, and ever since I became a member, I have been hooked to it. I have been visiting this website daily, reading, rating and commenting the reviews of the members here. By now, I am aware of each and ever aspect of MS. The categories are well defined and reviews once written are available to be viewed instantly, without any moderation from MouthShut. While this is all very good, there are a few things which are needed to be improved on, and we as member must take the initiative to help improve this forum. This is a form of consumer forum which reaches out to everyone on the Internet and is very useful because most of the reviews are based on real-life incidences and experiences. Here are some of my suggestions on how to make MS a delightful experience:
MS-Points
Now this is one aspect of MS that I feel must be addressed as soon as possible. We members get MS-Points for writing reviews and rating/commenting on others? reviews. While this is all very good, I would like MS-Points to be restructured. For a start, we must be allowed to show our MS-Points on our public profile. This will work as a form of goodwill that we may enjoy on this forum, and it will in due course of time, become a mechanism of judging the Star Writers on MS.
We must get points for the kind or rating that we get from other members. For example ? a Very Useful rating must fetch us 5 points, a Useful rating attracts 4 points and so on, and a Not Useful rating attracts 0 points. This will encourage the writers to write better reviews and it will inculcate a sense of competition among us, which will be good for MS also in due course of time.
I found little information in the Help Desk section of MS regarding MS-Points. I didn?t find any information on how to redeem these MS-Points. What is the use of points if we cannot show them on our profile or redeem them? Here, I would like to add that I haven?t seen the MS-Shopping section so I cannot comment on that.
Comments
The Comments Section is perhaps the best place to see on MS. Comments help give a glimpse of what others are thinking about your review and it serves the purpose in its true sense. Often, it is seen that people write long comments, which turn out to be as big as the review itself. I myself have been guilty of this crime many times. I think this should be controlled. As we are granted a limit of 8000 characters for our reviews, similarly we must be granted a limit of not more than (say) 1000 characters to write our comments. Comments are meant to be just comments, and nothing more than that.
Favorite Reviews
I know that as a matter of policy, MouthShut doesn?t allow us to give URLs of any useful resources on the Internet. But we must be allowed to pick a few reviews as favorites and let us display these favorite reviews in our private/public profiles. For a start, we can be allowed to list 10 reviews in the favorites section, and if it becomes successful then it can be increased to (say) 50 or 100. This will help the member in reaching a review quickly, without going thru the search box or through the different categories defined.
These are of course my own suggestions and it is up to the management of MouthShut to decide whether accept them or not. I have written all this only to create a general opinion among the members and raise a point of discussion. I expect some more suggestions from you all, and I would be glad to see them in the comments section.