Quality of articles appearing on Helium has no filtration at the input level. Helium does not subject prospective author-members to any sample writing scrutiny (as Suite101.com does) for acceptance. Helium has virtually no editorial review of articles; what you input is what gets published. This in a way encourages all prospective writers to jump into Helium with enthusiasm and write articles to earn some nominal money.
The only way of ensuring quality of articles is through the Rating system in Helium. Rating, per se, does not eliminate bad quality articles from the scene (unless complaints like plagiarism, off-topic and profanity are found to be true) but they get only down-graded in Helium. Since top-rated articles generally get better readership (when the number of articles are too many) in a way, we can say, articles "rated to be better by peers" are presented more for readership.
Does Rating definitely improve quality in Helium?
By and large, rating system seems to work in that direction. Where there are some "manageable" number of articles (say about 10), the rating system seem to fairly weigh the quality and rank the articles justly in the right order.
But where there are simply too many articles (say above 20), I have frequently seen that rating many times gets skewed. I have personally seen well-written articles some times getting buried below 50th percentile and are unable to raise up unless a leapfrog is done.
Also there are many instances (as frequently reported in Helium discussion boards) that articles poorly written, with grammatical mistakes, spelling mistakes and poor sentence structures (particularly if they are shorter in length with comparative articles) somehow get into top slots and stay there for long. Such articles, when viewed by readers can potentially damage the image of Helium as a reliable "knowledge provider".
Another potent issue: Assuming that there are 4 articles in a title and all the 4 happen to be poorly written, then, what really happens in rating is that the "least poor article" gets to the top slot! That's all! There is no mechanism to eliminate poor quality article as such in this system.
Considering all these issues, I have posted several suggestions in the Helium discussion forums to address the issue of quality in Helium. Here are they:
(1) FLAG FOR POOR QUALITY: During rating, Raters should be able to flag an article for "poor quality" or as "sub-standard" (though it may be within the topic and free from spelling mistakes). This option perhaps may be given to writers having 2 stars and above only.
(2) Address Grammar and spelling issues by reintroducing flagging:
Helium may introduce two more flagging options (a) "Minor grammar / spelling / sentence structure / formatting problems - needs correction".
(b) "Serious grammar/ spelling / sentence structure / formatting problems "Needs serious review". The former flagging can go to the author directly. The later should go to Helium too for intervention and for possible de-rating till the author leapfrogs.
(1) EDITORIAL INTERVENTION: some way of editorial intervention is needed in ensuring quality. Everything can't be done with voluntary service of member's rating. Of course, it is rather too difficult, considering the enormous volume of articles in Helium; but some monitoring of at least the top 3 articles in each title to ensure that no sub-standard article gets into this slot by any flaw in the rating process should be ensured. Helium should find some workable way for it.
(2) FLAGGING OUTSIDE RATING: Helium should find a way of encouraging members to pinpoint (outside Rating) poorly articles as and when they come across them (not necessarily while rating alone) to pave way for downgrading them or deleting them fast. Helium should compensate that effort by giving something equivalent to 1 rating star in some way. This recognition should be treated in par with rating star for any revenue sharing conditions.
(3) ENCOURAGE FLAGGING: Raters should in some way get recognition for better quality of rating based on the flagging they do. That is, instead of doing a casual reading and selecting one article better than the other in a fly, raters should be encouraged to flag poor quality articles having mistakes. Further, any writer getting flagged beyond some numbers should get a word of warning from Helium.
(4) RESTRICT NUMBER OF ARTICLES PER TITLE: This is one of my strongest recommendations. In my personal experience, I find only my top 5 ranked articles mostly earn my pennies. It means, other than having a huge stock to boast about, articles above 5th rank do not matter much to Helium and its writers. So, I certainly feel a reduction in (unwanted and unwieldy) quantity of articles will reflect in better quality of rating/ better working of rating engine.
My suggestion to Helium is to restrict number of articles to 20 per title. I don't think any new and unexplored point can be added substantially by a writer over and above these articles. With this restriction in place, the articles can be subjected to more thorough rating cycles than one with hundreds of articles thus improving rating efficiency and quality.
(6) ALLOW AUTHORS TO DELETE THEIR POORLY RATED ARTICLES: At present there is no provision for authors to delete their articles. If people are given the chance to remove their low ranked articles, it will only help in improving the quality of Helium.
I know pretty well that all my articles are not of top quality. Given a chance, I would like to at least delete 10 to 15 percent of them. They are the ones for which I have not earned a single penny and I am not inclined to spend time in improving and leapfrogging them.
Let us say, if this option is given and say 15 to 20% of lowest ranked articles get deleted from Helium. It is only going to improve Helium's quality and image. You will now have 15 to 20% less articles in the stock which is going to improve Rating efficiency in Helium.
(5) WEED OUT NON-REMUNERATIVE AND OLD TITLES: Do a massive weeding out of old, over burdened and non-remunerative titles from Helium's end. Let no rating time is wasted on account of addition of any new article or new leapfrog in such titles. Of course, Helium is already doing this exercise once in a while.
What does Helium want ultimately? Good quality articles that give useful information to readers or a large junk-store of articles which many do not read anyway? Make Helium leaner and healthier. It is one good way of improving Helium's quality and image.