KNOWLEDGE IS commonly socially constructed, through collaborative efforts towards shared objectives or by dialogues and challenges brought about by different persons’ perspectives. -- G. Salomon
Checkout my review on General Thoughts about MS also
Introduction
Let me make no mistake. Mouthshut.com is an OASIS among sandy deserts. You have so many sites creeping up day in and day out. There are so many dot-com-dot-gones in the past few years. MS.com was like an OASIS to me, seeing so many sites offering variety of things. When I write this review, I felt I should be writing more about the what I feel about the site and the techie in me asks me to evaluate the website as a whole (Look forward to my review on ’’General Thoughts on MS’’ also. This review is to balance the two and come up with my own thoughts about a site that has become so close and dearer to me that it has become a habit to me, just like I need to have my coffee and news delivered to me like an addiction.
When you think of what makes MS so unique, you tend to think of so many things. Be it how this e-business site for INFOMEDIARY business model makes you get attached to it. The myriad of people you see in this site. Number of crème de la crème of the society writing reviews. Interesting topics, Usefulness on a personal level, controversies surrounding topics, personalities and prejudices, you name it and you get it.
To me, knowledge is power. Ignorance is bliss to some people and they tend to live blissfully in ignorance. You see the beauty of these two proverbs here. People with knowledge write powerful reviews and some ignorant people live blissfully by ignoring these powerful opinions.
Just like everyone has a heart, a belly button, a nose etc, every one of us has an opinion. All the opinions are not alike, just like all the five fingers are not alike. You need to be very dogmatic and charismatic to analyze, collate and decide what is right for you, when it comes to an important decision for you. MS is one of the exceptional platforms to do that, provided that you have the capacity to listen, accept analyze and think. MS is an exceptional medium where you can get opinions on products that you would love to buy or consider buying, get to know about new books, movies and also about a debatable issue.
MY Opinion on MS
MS as a website
Human Factors- ☼ ☼ ☼ ½ ₧
MS as a website is an excellent one in UI perspective. As many of you are aware of the new redesign, MS is sleek and accessible. The real estate is nice and any HFE guru would agree that human factors. There are some aspects that are to be improved upon. MS is a very user-friendly site that would make Jakob Nielson proud
Load Time- ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ₧
Load time is very good, albeit the fact that at times it is not so good. You have to give it the due credit it deserves given the fact that there are members from all over the world. I have seen glitches only sporadically, mainly due to database maintenance or an upgrade or a reboot.
Content-- ☼ ☼ ½ ₧
Content wise, MS needs to improve a lot. This means that as MS members, we need to contribute more to the site we like so much, by writing many reviews in various categories. It lies in our hands to write review on each one of some 100000 odd products (!) available. We have approximately 50000 reviews, which is minimal compared to what this site is capable of. We need to write one review a week at least. May be there will be more writers if they go back to pay-as-you-write model. Logically it is infeasible unless there is solid content available in the site on all the latest products and for all segments.
Navigability- ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ₧
The site is easily navigable and there are few broken links on certain products but is easily accessible. The non-use of menus (which is good for cross-platform browsers and error-prevention) makes it harder sometimes to have uniformity across pages. For example you can see half of the community center links in the home page and full list in the community center links
Review Accessibility ☼ ☼ ☼ ½ ₧
This is good but needs to improve. At any point of day, you have 51-81 live links (depending upon when the database backup happens), (1 ROTD 5 main page, 30 More, 0-30 more more(!!), 15 hot reviews). You also have 153-243 indirect links available to you (by 3 links of same topic for the review you read). So, if you want you have a maximum of 324 reviews to read in a day. I say that is very good. You don?t get that many available in many sites. However, you need to have a better search option based on reviews along with product search. This would certainly improve the review accessibility.
Variety of Topics ☼ ☼ ☼ ½ ₧
There is scope for a lot of improvement. I am sure the products will be added at a faster rate in the future.
Member Support ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ½ ₧
Customer care at MS is very personalized and very effective. Obviously not everyone can yield to everyone?s whims and fancies. Aarti and her team is doing a marvelous job here. My sincere thanks are due to them for their tireless support.
Members ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ☼ ₧
Members of MS are the best part of this website. The myriad of members, the types of members, the intellect, emotion, writing skills and responses are what that makes this site run. This is one of the most successful ingredients of MS
Alerts ☼ ☼ ☼ ½ ₧
This is working all right and I have been happy about it. Sometimes you don?t get emails, if there is an SMTP backlog at the ISP.
Conclusion
All said and done, MS is an exceptional site and my experience has been a very fruitful and I have gained a lot from it. I salute the vision of Faisal and his team. I am equally indebted to all the myriad of members who have honed my skills in many ways. I have gained a lot from MS. Features and suggestions in comments(!)
I dedicate my 50th review to all of you members, Aarti and her team, Faisal and also to the IT team at MS.
Long live MS. I shall never keep my mouth shut at MS!!
I hope you enjoyed this review. Do RRC as time permits
©Kalil
All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work. -- Calvin Coolidge
Happiness is always a by-product. It is probably a matter of temperament, and for anything I know it may be glandular. But it is not something that can be demanded from life, and if you are not happy you had better stop worrying about it and see what treasures you can pluck from your own brand of unhappiness. Davies, Robertson