by Gordon Hamilton

Created on: June 04, 2009

There can be little doubt that were Helium writers to be surveyed en masse regarding whether Helium statistics should be made real-time, the significant majority at least would immediately respond in the affirmative. This is of course entirely understandable as we all of us have a natural human thirst for up to the second information at all times and are never content with details which do not comply in this respect, however minutely. What we should do, however, in response to this question is stop for a minute to think of and appreciate what we have at the moment and what any such required upgrade may mean in the longer term.

As writers on Helium, we have access at all times to a number of statistics regarding the articles we have written, their performance in ranking within the title they were written to and our overall earnings upon the site. The statistics applicable to what articles we have written and the royalties we have earned tend to update on very approximately an hourly basis. Is there really any need for us to have more up to date information than this, bearing in mind the potential cost addressed further down this page?

The statistics regarding up-front payments and empty title bonus payments for starred writers on Helium are of course not updated so frequently. There is, however, an excellent reason for this in that these payments are not technically earned at the time of writing the article but on the last day of the calendar month. Up-front payments are determined by the number of writing stars a writer has at the end of the calendar month in which the article was written (provided it was prior to the 25th of that month - later articles carry forward) and are also dependant upon the writer having at least one rating star. Any indication of the writer's potential earnings in this respect could be significantly altered - up or down - by an increase or decrease in their number of awarded stars.

Any move to convert Helium statistics to real-time would require significant technical upgrading of the Helium servers. At the moment, Helium probably stands out like a beacon on the Internet for the way in which it is constantly affording new and exciting opportunities to its writers, both in terms of earning capacity and in ways in which they can develop their craft. If attention, money and time were to be diverted away from this process in order to provide real-time statistics, all of us would suffer accordingly in the longer term.

I hope it is therefore evident why I have to conclude that no, Helium statistics should not be made real-time and that the information Helium presently provides and the frequency with which it provides it should be more than satisfactory for all our needs and purposes.

Learn more about this author, Gordon Hamilton.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.