by Laurie Childree

Created on: February 16, 2009   Last Updated: April 06, 2009

Helium is a website that allows writers at various skill levels to express themselves through the written word. The ratings system is what eventually places the articles in their proper ranks according to quality. Everyone benefits if the quality of Helium is constantly improved upon and maintained. So how is the maintaining and improving of quality at Helium achieved?

The goals of improving and maintaining quality at Helium has to be a community wide effort. Not only is Helium staff constantly coming up with new ideas to make the site better and more beneficial to writers but the community boards allow the writers to tell Helium officials what they would like to see on the site. This isn't enough, there are also site stewards that search their various channels for quality and articles not up to par but this still falls short. It's up to each and every writer to do their part as well.

It is up to every Helium writer to become familiar with the writers agreement and writing guidelines for Helium to ensure that minimum standards are met. Each writer must write to the best of their ability and utilize the tools available to them. The community boards are where members can find announcements on up coming changes to the site and get critiques of their articles to improve upon them.

All Helium members should rate a few sets of articles at least after each article submission, more if they can find the time. Rating should be done carefully with each presented article being read thoroughly. Raters have the ability to contact other writers when rating to make them aware of errors in the article or a loss of formatting they may not have been aware of so they can fix it. These should be done nicely and there shouldn't be any picking apart of the article although giving the writter an idea of where the error is can be rather helpful. (This feature can also be used to compliment the writer.)

The flagging tool is available to writers both in the ratings screens and outside of it though user tools. It should be used to flag for things such as plagiarism so that the Helium staff can investigate any suspected cases and remove articles found to be plagiarized as this is bad for the site. Flagging of articles that are full of foul language and adult content is a must as well since both are violations of the user agreement. These articles will be removed from the site by the Helium staff.

Writers can also help by leapfrogging their shorter articles and correcting typos in articles. Depending on the number of typos an email to content@helium.com may be enough to fix the problem so that articles appear to be more professional.

Working together and producing the best quality possible is the fastest way to maintain and improve the quality at Helium. Alerting staff to problems with the site and utilizing flagging tools along with contacting writers and paying attention to ones own writing as well will help to ensure that we all get maximum benefit from Helium.

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