Quarter Century. Review on MouthShut Trusted Circle

This is my 25th review & I could'nt have thought of a better topic for a review on MS.

The word trust reminds me of one thought which was a part of my MS profile a few months ago that I had read in thoughts.com that are:

“To trust, you too must be trustworthy.”

In the context of mouthshut.com it very aptly fits into the funda of Trust Circle.

Trust has various synonyms. Reliability, Faith & Confidence. The dictionary meanings are Belief depending on integrity  &  Firm belief that a person can be relied upon.

Trust in Mouthshut: Trust in Mouthshut touches two aspects:

Ø Trust the reviews in MS: Mouthshut is an opinion site that offers each member an opportunity to share views on various products, services etc. On reading these reviews the fellow members rate & comment on these reviews. These form a base for various product users to buy the said product. This is where one can trust MS for the opinions written and I think MS has done pretty well in this aspect.

Ø *Trust the writers at MS: * The Circle of Trust(COT) is a very innovative concept on MS. But I doubt if the concept is well understood by all members. I d like to elaborate on this aspect in this review. There will be members who would not agree to me but I d like them to forth their point of view by commenting.

YTM ITY  This is nothing but You Trust Me  & I ‘ll Trust you. This is what you call reciprocal trust. Irrespective whether you read a members review or whether to you like his or review or not, still you end up trusting him just because he/she trusts you. I don’t find any reason why one should have big trust lists. You end up adding the member to the list even when you actually don’t. Some members even trust a member immediately after they sign up. I have seen a few members who trusted me and who still do, I find that the member has not written a single review nor has he/she read any of my reviews or others; still they have 15/20 members in their list also a few members have added them to their trust list. By doing so one is defeating the whole meaning of the word trust.

However there are members who add these new comers with one review or so their credit to their list. This is purely to encourage them to write well & better in their forthcoming reviews. There is nothing wrong with this. I feel that the COT should be used effectively to encourage newcomers.

Ratings: In case a member keeps rating a member  highly, such member is added to the trust list so as to have him/her rating you higher in the other reviews too. It also works in the reverse way. A member rating the other lowly is added to the trust list so that he/she changes his or her opinion and starts rating him/her higher. I have an experience to share here. I would’nt name the members involved but what I noticed is really amusing. A member writing reviews used to get rated lowly by a particular member. I saw the rating member in the writing member’s trust list after his second review. Then when the writing member wrote his third, he got an SR from her again. After this I found the rating member in the writing members Distrust list.

Distrust: Being added to the distrust list of a member has various reasons:

Ø Content of one’s review is hurts the sentiments of the others.

Ø When the ideas of member doesn’t match the other.

Ø When a member resorts to copying reviews from other sites or MS itself.

Ø Without any reason

How to build trust in MS

Ø Writing original reviews and not copied ones.

Ø Give an unbiased opinion without hurting others sentiments(usage of words matter a lot)

Ø Encourage newcomers by commenting on their reviews.

Ø Commenting sensibly on reviews that deserve it and may be add a tinge of humour to it.

My trusts here on MS. The reason why I have trusted members has changed from time to time. Initially it used to be members who used to encourage me to write more & better with their comments. Then I took their place & used it is a tool to encourage newcomers. I confess on one thing here. I have one member in my list who is there on a YTM ITY basis. But no regrets on that because he really writes well. But now it is members who write convincing reviews and well presented ones. I have very few members in my trust list. I am stingy in adding members to my trust list. There are a few notions that one should have more members trusting you than you trust others. Well all that is Bull Shit! It doesnt matter how many members you have trusted & whether such number is more than the number of members trusting you. It is totally the members prerogative. Its just that the trusts in the list should be justified. I haven’t found time to update my list. There are some really good writers not in my list. I shall do it in a short time now.

Members in my list have unique characters. The way they write on specific topics is simply amazing. Sometimes I envy them for the way they present reviews & their content.

People who trust me To the members who trust me I would like to thank you  folks a lot for the encouragement you have given me to keep writing. I have not written for quite sometime now & in this period there were a lot of members who wrote to me asking me when I was to write my next review. It is purely because of these members that I am back here writing because I had almost lost touch with MS for almost a month now. I used to read a few reviews and comment on even lesser number of reviews. Thanks a lot folks!