I stumbled across Mouthshut.com by reading about it on another web site. A member of Mouthshut.com had written about what a wonderful place this was, and how the other members were so nice and supportive. I thought ’’Yeah, right...there is a writing web site somewhere that the people are actually nice...sure’’ and I ignored her article. The next day, however, I remembered what she had written, and some small hunch told me to try it. ’’Why not, ’’ I thought, ’’It’s a free site, so what do you have to lose?’’ I typed ’’mouthshut.com’’ into my Internet Explorer and settled back for the long, boring wait until the page loaded, as all other writing and review sites are wont to do.
I didn’t get to become comfortable. The Mouthshut home page had loaded in record time. ’’Not bad, ’’ I thought, ’’Let’s look around.’’ My first impression was favorable. The colors and design were pleasing to the eye, and I liked the facts that Mouthshut.com featured different writers at the top of every page, and new opinions were listed on the front page. ’’Okay, I’ll sign up, ’’ I decided.
Registration was quick and painless, and soon I had my brand new member name and was happily typing away designing my profile page. I was beginning to feel optimistic about the whole ordeal, and soon I was whistling while I worked. I surfed around the site a bit to get a feel of how things operated and what opinions were wanted, then I rattled off a couple of quick reviews, rated a few other members reviews, added a couple I really liked to my trust list, and decided to wait until the next day to see what reaction I would receive.
The reactions I found the next day were quite heartening. Both of my reviews had received ratings of ’’Recommended’’, but then I remembered that ’’Highly Recommended’’ was the highest rating, and that was the rating I wanted. I looked at the comments people had left for me, hoping to discover what it was that I had done wrong. People were so very nice and polite in their messages, even as they told me that my reviews weren’t long enough, so the comments didn’t make me feel bad at all. Quite the contrary, I was happy to be at a site where people believe in helping one another out with constructive criticism and advice. I looked back at the reviews I had written and decided that, indeed, they were too short, and I resolved to do better with my next one.
From that moment on, thanks to the great site design and wonderful people here, I have felt right at home here, and I thank you all.
One of my favorite features of the Mouthshut.com web site: The Mouthpad. No other site is as flexible about adding new topics as this one, and the webmasters are so good about responding. So far, I have submitted 3 different ideas to mouthshut.com, and all 3 of them were processed and posted within 24 hours.