by Karon Brandt

Created on: February 06, 2009   Last Updated: February 05, 2010

A "community" is a group of people having common interests; etiquette is the practice and forms prescribed by social convention or authority. (American Heritage Dictionary)

Helium has matured into a top quality writing community since its infancy in October 2006. It has also evolved as a business. Helium has opened its virtual library doors to the world-wide community of writers, aged 13 and over. Helium is home to one of the best fact-based article directories on the web.

Helium now has, as of early 2010, about 200,000 active writers working around the clock to write, rate, and expand Helium's database. Helium's directory now contains about one million articles under 125,000 distinct titles.

That's a huge community, by anyone's standards. Helium's standards have risen along with its growth. Whereas Helium used to accept 100 and 200 word "comments" about topics, it now expects writers to create discrete articles with a minimum of 400 words.

Helium's recently stated objectives, worded as "beliefs" ("What is Helium?"), include world-wide contributions of sharing knowledge with readers, giving readers a choice of viewpoints on a variety of topics, and offering publishers an easier, more efficient way to obtain needed content.

Helium is now reaching about three million readers a month who want quality, dependable, accurate information presented to them in an easy-to-read, web format.

Of course, any community must have a Guide; and a writers' community must be on the "same page," to produce quality works as a unified, standardized whole.

Helium's business community adopts the highest moral and ethical standards of human behavior, the Golden Rule: Treat others with the same respect and courtesy with which you want to be treated.

The reputation of a site depends on the reputation of its writers. To build trust with its readers, a site must develop integrity, credibility, and authenticity.

Responding to the original premise of a "community-based etiquette guide for writers," the rules now become almost self-evident.

1. In a cooperative "Community," the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Helium writers should get involved in the writing community. Anyone who commits their time, energy, (and, sometimes money), to a "Cause" is much more invested in the outcome.

Participate in the Community Boards; "speak" to other writers and staff members in the community. Learn more about them; become part of the Helium "team" of regular contributors who have the highest, long-term

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