Well I cannot imagine myself writing on this topic but for one more colleague member here at mouthshut. Well I personally believe having a trusted circle here on mouthshut is a worthless proposition until few changes are made to the system. When I started writing on MS I too was obsessed with this trusted circle thingy and wanted that more and more people add me to their trusted circle. But not the same now.
According to me most people add members to their trusted circle depending on whether they like the way they write, or whether they like the facts these people provide in their reviews or whether they write with a view point I seem to be apt.
I will mention the caveats involved with all the above three and a few other caveats involved with the trusted circle..
Meri handwriting tumhari handwriting se sundar hai…:-- During my school days, there was one teacher of ours who used to give more marks for handwriting than for writing correct. And I was always at the receiving end cause I was prctiing being a doctor since my childhood;-). Similarly with people who add people in their trust list because they like the way they write and not judge them by the contents of the review. Writing humorous, flashy reviews is one thing and making them useful is other. Though this never means that all flashy, humorous reviews are not useful.
Main Jo bhi kahunga sach kahunga:- Well sometimes people are so obsessed with truth that they forget that truth also is required to be presented in a nice way to be useful for people. And yes I have seen reviews here on MS who seem to be technically very sound supported with a lot of facts and figures but I for one am not able to understand. Adding such people to my trust list is also a NO for me because however truthful their reviews may be and the person might be trusted but since I do not understand him.
Kuen ka maindak:- This is the most dangerous category I must say, but most people’s trust list I see here belong to this category and this seems to be very apt to me as well. You think in my way, so you can be trusted, however wrong and invalid my view points are, you trust me. So how does it help me, just I feel very goody goody that many people are there in this world like me. Do I see the actual world. NO.
These were the points I must say which I have in mind regarding the way people select their TC…Though some people might say that you can use a combination of any of the above three to choose your trusted circle but me says its not problem – Problem its problem * problem..
Ok now some pitfalls in the system itself. Here I am assuming that you all have added a lot of people in your trust list against my advice…
Master Of One, Baaki sab mein.?.:- The heading says it all I believe. Lets take an example for this. I am a doctor suppose(Though I never could become one actually). So in what you will trust my advice, selecting a aerobic program for slimming yourself or selecting some cement to build your house. Well in my 23 years of life span I haven’t seen one person who has a diversified knowledge about lot of things. So if I write trustworthy reviews in one category, it might not be true for my reviews in other categories. So how do I solve this problem??
Tu hai mera bhai, mai hun tera bhai.:- This reminds me of an ol’ friend that’s why I put it up here. Well I have seen the trust list of a lot of people(and the distrust list as well), the trusted by and I trust list is almost the same. So what say… u trust me and then only I trust you… not correct…Though probably you might say it increases some kind of belongingness with the person involved, but is that kind of a feeling required on a forum like MS where everybody is supposed to give an unbiased view on products and reviews as well….unbiased on who has written it?
Mera Kaam Kya hai: Well as far as I know about it, the trusted circle works in a way that u can select your sight filters, to see the reviews by people whom you trust before the reviews by people whom u don’t and probably remove the reviews from people whom you distrust… But is that valid.. MS boasts of a large number of categories/products/advices on which reviews can be written and I certainly would not believe anyone saying that everywhere he goes to read a review, he finds someone from his trust list having written a review there. For this to happen I believe your TC must contain more than 30% members of MS. So is TC that useful is the question that all of us have to ask ourselves and probably MS as well.
Ok lot of bashing the system, now I have some suggestions that can be used to make TC a better working system…
M2M Abuses: Lot of reviews were there about mouthshut being justified in banning members and this is one of the reasons they do so. Though I feel mouthshut is justified in doing so, but one of the suggestions in another review on the same topic from cool_tanmay regarding using distrust list to not allow someone sending me an M2M. So instead of pulling MS in between I can simply stop the person directly by adding him/her to my distrust list.
Making TC Category specific: Well this is one of the steps I feel should be added to make it better.. Add categories to the TC. I might trust one person in one category, while when I am reading other category reviews, the system treats him/her as any other normal writer.
Rate Members:- In addition to displaying TC on the profile page, there must be something to rate the writers as well on different criteria and then display a consolidated rating and recommendations for each one.
Change the Name: Do not call TC as TC…I don’t know why but this name tells me that I have trusted someone for everything.. Instead it could be called as recommended circle or something like that.
So that’s it.. this is all I have to say about TC.. comments and suggestions… welcome as always.
Enjoi,
Dj
P.S.: People in the My trust list are those whom I want to look forward to by writing some M2M or read their reviews and comments on them. As too many alerts in my mailbox I do not like…