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The system of rating Helium articles looks pretty simple, doesn't it? Yet, people question their inability to gain the stars they feel they deserve, and this article is written to help members recognize where they may be going wrong, and how to effectively rate articles on Helium website. Effective rating helps to sort all of the articles on the site into the right order, and these are counted as quality rates. So what defines a quality rate?

*Layout and punctuation.
*Feedback to others.
*Reading items in conjunction with titles.
*Judging between two informative articles.
*Judging between two bad articles.
*Judging articles which flag.
*Quantity.

Layout and punctuation.

It's extremely important that members recognize that bad layout may not be the fault of a writer. Here, many are unaware of the PREVIEW feature which would have helped them to make the most of layout and to insert appropriate spaces between their paragraphs. Others have technical difficulties since a recent update, and find that strange text is being inserted into their articles which will eventually be edited out when they send in a report.

Layout on a web based article is essential, though instead of judging an article based solely on layout, the rating system allows you to give feedback to members, and this is vital to the rating process. It informs, it encourages and helps members to understand features which perhaps they have not yet found. If you find articles with layout problems, help the writer by dropping them a quick note explaining how to leapfrog and to use the preview feature. Encouragement goes a long way.

Feedback to others.

If you find an article which is losing impetus in the ratings because of some tiny adjustment being needed, again your feedback makes the world of difference. When rating, if I comment on an article, I tend to skip the rating on that article since I feel that my rating would be biased by my feelings towards layout or grammatical problems which I have brought to the attention of writers. In the case of an obvious difference in quality, of course, this is different and I rate accordingly.

Reading items in conjunction with titles.

This part of rating is essential. Someone's article may be the most articulate writing you have ever read, though if it is placed off topic, it does not merit the reward of a high placement. Often writers make errors of judgment and write articles to titles, forgetting the significance of the title itself, and wander into regions which are off topic

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