by Lorenza

Created on: March 12, 2009

When I first joined Helium, I was thrilled at the aspect of being able to join a community of writers and to obtain some respect for my skill. I was especially pleased to see how the rating scores would afford me additional feedback about my writing, and that spelling would be considered in the scoring process. Since I am particularly anal about spelling, grammar and punctuation, I thought these things would be taken into high consideration, so when I wrote articles I tried to make sure I was following all the appropriate rules to be able to attain the highest ratings.

However, I found that through the rating process as it stands, there were an awful lot of nearly illiterate and often careless writers out there, some whose articles were being rated higher than mine. This distressed me, considering the added effort I put into each article I wrote.

If spelling errors impact my rating scores, then why are my articles failing to attain the higher scores? I believe I have determined the answer to this question, and it all comes down to the rating process and how it fails in a number of ways.

The only choices one has when rating articles are three levels of positive scoring, and I feel this makes the rating process ineffective, at best. To really see the impact that spelling and other proper usage of words have on rating scores, I believe Helium needs to revamp the system to allow for more precise scoring of the writers and their work.

I suggest that the rating system be changed to include additional ways to rate each article, allowing the reader to apply a more accurate rating to each article he or she reads and to give the writer the motivation and encouragement to be more literate and less careless. If Helium is to be considered in the forefront of writing markets, then it has to hold itself to a higher standard, attracting better quality writers and really giving them a platform from which to spring into the world of successful writers.

If below quality writers can earn higher ratings than I can due to the inefficiency of the rating process, then I become discouraged and feel that it is not fair to me as a writer who takes spelling more seriously. Helium has allowed me to write for fun and a little profit, but I am disillusioned by not being able to attain high scores even when my articles are clearly of higher quality. So if spelling and other writing errors are to be a determination of a writer's scores, then the rating process needs to be changed to allow for errors to be noted and for a more clear critique of writing style and quality.

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