I became a member of MS and put my first review on it almost 2 years back. Neither did I have the notion of what all MS was about and nor did I care back then. I stayed in a dormant state for very long. Over a period of time I understood MS more. I begun to see it affecting my work to some extent:-). Something which sways you cannot be ignored any longer right? You cannot say any more that you don’t care.
So, here are some random notes on Mouthshut. Some of these are opinions and some are suggestions and others are complaints.
Isn’t it midnight on the other side of the world? : Since this is a site for writing reviews, let us start here itself. There are 2 points about them. One is the review itself - the "write" part. And second is the reviewer, the "right" part. What I mean is that if reviews were just written without anyone reading them, then they loose all relevance. So, why is it that MS has ignored the second equally important aspect here i.e. rating reviews? I mean you have star writers, why don’t you have star reviewers? To me that seems common sense.
Trying to catch your heart is like trying to catch a star: Talking about MS’ way of deciding stars. Hmmm I did read through that tips page of MS and felt that the points mentioned therein are all good. In fact all of them are mandatory. No do not get me wrong, I am even talking about posting your photograph there. A writer should have his photo present. Now here are the reasons and tell me which one you do not see directly linked with a person’s writing style?
1. You may be on Police Dept’s wanted list. MS will be able to do great service to society if they got you caught
2. You may be a famous personality. MS will be able to do great service to your fans if you posted your photograph at their site
3. I may be under 18 and might be writing on shhhh.hush hush topics. So by looking at my photo you can make that out
4. How can you write well or rate well if you cannot spend time in posing well in front of a camera?
Stars do affect us - Astrology says so! Talking about competions, the views of star writers and raters(if rater concept is put in place) should also be considered. I know the elite panel at MS is doing their job and doing it well, but then the stars are still the ones who are closest to a lot of people here. Their votes should be allowed to influence, say, at least 40% of the final results.
Partners in rhyme and partners in crime: Talking about writing reviews. Well MS should definitely consider allowing for reviews which are co-written. This would be an excellent form of people really coming together. It would be like writing a research paper where many people are involved. And any rating given to such a review should reflect on both writer’s page.
Shimmering Neon lights: MS should do away with some concepts which are no more relevant. The concept behind Review Of The Day should be scrapped. No one seems to know or understand how it gets picked. What I mean here is that they should name the Review of the Day to "Review from Archives". Randomly pick up one VU review which is more than a year old and put it here. That might just hold people’s interest more.
Harbour the Pearls: There should be a link/ page for Interesting Facts about MS which should get renewed often. My suggestions for this one would be to list points such as "When and by whom was the first ever review posted on MS" or "What was the topic of first ever review on MS". Similarly, links to first ever reviews in each category should appear here. Other statistics such as who was the first ever star writer and link to one of his random VU reviews, which category till date has maximum reviews under it, which product is searched for, the maximum number of times, which product has maximum number of reviews on it(besides all categories of MS of course which seem to be having 200+ reviews each).
And the Nobel goes to .: Lastly MS always does competitions which are future-dated. What they should allow is probably open a competion and allow for people to submit their older reviews for the same. Like let us say MS comes up with a competion on "Best Title Given To A Review". They should allow for people to submit an old entry of their’s for the same. Yes MS can put in a limit that the review should not be more than 6 months old or so.
Sweetheart . Sweetheart. Are you fast asleep? MS you should realize that sooner or later everything loses its differentiating factor. The need of the hour is to diversify. Most importantly - keep people interested. These are my random thoughts, and general notes about MS. I am sure other MSians will have probably better ones too.
If you do like my suggestions and find them practical, then I also have a mother of them all - "Start a competition wherein you award the best 3 suggestions given to improve MS". And I am sure you will consider my review as one of the wild card entries.
Are you fast asleep? Good! Because that is the only time I can really speak to you.