EP and ME: Romasuave's Epinion's W/O Jul 26 '05    Write an essay on this topic. Tweet Popular Products in Music Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast From $8 Mai by Eri Sugai From $4 The Bottom Line Why doesn't anyone ever ask who our least favorite members are? This is an entry in RomaSuave's write-off celebrating his 100th review. Click on the link to go to his entry and a list of the other participants. MEMBER NAME AND MEANING BEHIND IT Hi, I’m Margaret Penguinlady, and I’m a penguin addict. Until I got married, I had something like 683 penguin figurines, dish towels, pitchers, ice buckets, drinking glasses, wrapping paper, mugs, ashtrays, hot pads, wall hangings, sheets, towels, books, and about 190 framed images hanging in the guest bathroom. Penguinman, who absolutely does NOT understand the collecting instinct, put a stop to all that, though, and since our move last winter, I’m now making do with my mugs and a few figurines that I’ve snuck into the house. But the rest are all packed away, awaiting the day when we have a room that I can dedicate to my birds. And they’re all birds, too, not cartoons. "Penguin" was taken. DATE I JOINED EPINIONS December 14, 1999. HOW I STUMBLED UPON EPINIONS I read an article in the Wall Street Journal, I think, about consumer review websites. NUMBER OF MEMBER VISITS Distressingly low - 24,398 as I write this, for 479 reviews. That’s an average of 51 per review. Feh. NUMBER OF TOTAL VISITS 243,434 as of 3:00 pm PST on July 26, 2005. It averages 508 per review. MY VERY FIRST REVIEW It was a pretty lame review of Smithsonian magazine. I never read instruction manuals, and this was no exception, so I just jumped in with both feet and had no idea what I was doing. If you insist on reading it, go find it yourself, but I warn you, it’s really not worth the trouble. In fact, not too many of my early ones are. THE 3 FAVORITE REVIEWS THAT I’VE WRITTEN Hmmm. This is a tough one. Most of my faves are in the Writer’s Corner, where they languish unseen and make me nary a penny. And some of my favorites aren’t my best, and vice versa. But here are some of the ones I enjoyed writing: Confessions of a Christmas Tree Jew The Birthmother’s Perspective The Sissy’s Guide to Camping Gear I’ve revised and updated each of these before listing them here. I’m also pleased with the way my travel reviews turned out. I did three on Turkey and ten on Italy, including separate reviews on dining, driving, and peeing, back in the good old days when you could do more than one on a generic destination. Cheeses - this is like trying to pick your favorite from among your children... MY MOST COMPLETE REVIEW I have no idea. After writing here for a few years, I settled on a format for product reviews that works well for me and provides probably too much information. So any of my product reviews written after June 2002 is probably as complete as anything you’ll find on the site. MY MOST SUCCESSFUL WRITE-OFF I haven’t hosted one, so I’m not sure what “successful” means. I’ve participated in several, though. Most are of the 㦀 Questions About Me” ego-boo variety (like this one,) but I did participate in one hosted five years ago by Frazzledspice on banned books. Here it is: I know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Is that my most successful one? Dunno - you tell me. MY MOST LUCRATIVE REVIEW I reviewed the Select Comfort mattress in November 2000 and so far it’s made $197.04, with 15,846 hits. THINGS I LIKE MOST ABOUT EPINIONS The people, of course. But I participate for several reasons. First, I have an opinion about just about everything and love having a forum to express it. I also enjoy writing and don’t have much opportunity to exercise my chops. And I’m bossy and love to give people advice. Back to the people. I’ve “met” some wonderful people here, including a few in person. Some of them are people I probably wouldn’t have met under any other circumstances, and others are kindred souls. And I’ve never laughed as much in my life as I have since I started reading here. The endorphins go into overdrive. THINGS I DISLIKE MOST ABOUT EPINIONS Hmmm... where to begin? If you’ve read any of my rants, you’ll know that the so-called “search” system makes me crazy. It continues to amaze me that a site that depends on users being able to find the items they want to read about has such an incredibly inept search system for doing so. The search should have been the first thing they designed, but six years later, no one has lifted a finger to fix the mess. So I have a bunch of reviews on wild-bird feeders that can never be found unless someone stumbles across them on my review list, because they aren’t listed in any search results. And items can only located by use of one descriptor at a time (under $500 OR Nikon OR digital OR...) instead of all at once. And at least in Home and Garden, the number of duplications on each page is astounding; some products are listed on more than a dozen pages, and some pages use up as much as half of their listings space with duplicates. Sheer sloppiness and ineptitude - who’s minding the store? I also think the Advisor program is useless. A lot of Advisors neither write nor advise, but get bonuses based on how many ratings they give. There doesn’t seem to be a standard of either quality or quantity for the amount of actual advising, as opposed to simply rating, to be done. Finally, and this post is a prime example, the posting process needs some work. I get especially peeved when I hit "Continue" and get an endless list of incomplete HTML codes but no indication of where they are. I spend forever searching them out and trying again, only to be told that I've missed one. Or the system doesn't like my quote marks in a link. If it can tell us what we're doing wrong, why can't it tell us where the mistake is??? Sorry. I get carried away. MEMBERS I ADMIRE MOST ON EPINIONS Good lord - lots. Among currently active members, I love to read what prfstars has to say. Although he and I are on the opposite ends of the political spectrum, I love to read whatever Pythonesque madness spews from the fertile imagination of 29th_Candidate. Grouch, currently deployed to Iraq, was one of the first people on my WOT. Disinclined awes me with the agility of her mind. JKKelley cracks me up. I wish KatyBrighteyes wrote more. Millinocket and Laryan, Mimi369 and sundogg, Howard_Creech and Haggis... There are lots more, but those are the ones who light up my alerts. Of those who aren’t currently active, the one I miss most is tlimjoco, who not only quit but took down her reviews, thereby denying us the continuing pleasure of her thoughtful intelligence and erudition. I long for the return of Hadassahchana; she currently rates and comments but hasn't written in a long time. The lamented MIA BadKittyM, driven off the site by a multiple-account spamming lunatic, is - was - always articulate, intelligent, outspoken, and amusing, and I look forward to her return. Mshawpyle hasn’t posted in a long time. Sordid-1 quit two years ago, to my dismay. The late, great Mr.Eyore’s doppelwanger piece remains one of the funniest things I’ve ever read, anywhere. (I note with sadness that of the ten men I listed in my August 2000 discussion of the ten “hottest” men on Epinions, only three are still around. All are on the list here, although only one is still active. Sigh.) Thanks to all of you, and to the many, many others I haven’t mentioned here but appreciate every time I log on. You’re my models and mentors. MY ULTIMATE GOAL AT EPINIONS Goal? At Epinions? Uhhh... well, no, I don’t think so. As I stumble around the site and come across some of the firestorms and rages that occasionally erupt between members, my whelming temptation is to say, “Hello? This is a website, for crying out loud, and nothing that matters here should make any difference in any of our lives. Let go of that mouse and go take a walk.” That said, I’d like to have a few more readers among the membership; it’s depressing to craft a piece and have it ignored by all but a handful of loyals. But that’s about it. Thanks to RomaSuave for not only hosting this write-off to celebrate his 100th review, but also for graciously allowing me to crash it. Here’s to another 100!

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