by Megan Stoddard

Created on: December 06, 2009

As soon as you submit your first article on Helium, you are confronted with a pair of articles to rank against each other. You must choose which one, A or B, is more valuable, and whether it's slightly more valuable, more, or by far. The middle option is Skip, and you are limited, it seems, to ten skips. Sometimes (this is true for leapfrogged articles), the middle option is Same instead. As soon as you have rated one pair, you are given another.

Even if you have read the instructions in the Help Guides, you will probably find the rating process confusing at first. Helium's community boards are full of posts by new members asking for explanations of how rating works and what exactly is required of them. And on a fairly regular basis, someone complains that they have done dozens or even hundreds of rates and not earned any rating stars.

What earns you rating stars is rating regularly, rating consistently, and rating in agreement with at least 75% of the other raters. The last part may seem the hardest and most unfair. After all, you can't tell how others might be rating, and your opinions may be different from theirs. However, earning stars is easier than it seems. The following tips got me to five stars in two months, and should make a star rater out of anyone.

*Always pick "Slightly more," unless one article is superb and the other horrible.

This option is the most likely to put you in agreement with the other raters. If you feel that one article is many times better than the other, which will probably only happen occasionally, feel free to pick "More." The "By far" option should be reserved for cases in which one article is worthy of the New York Times and the other would fail if it were a sixth grade essay.

And if you are rating poetry or songs, always choose "Slightly more." For those, the usual criteria of grammar and formatting don't apply, so people rate based on what they like. You are more likely to agree with more of the other raters if you choose "Slightly more."

*Read each article, but do not spend too much time on it.

I find that I can usually decide which article is better after reading each of them once. And one read is certainly enough to notice if there are any glaring spelling or grammar mistakes, or factual errors. If I honestly can't decide which one is better, I skip it, or choose Same if it is a leapfrog.

Some people spend lots of time reading each article. Judging from the posts on the community boards, those are often the people who

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