by John Durant

Created on: March 07, 2007   Last Updated: May 22, 2007

The time to care about your article ratings is NOW! The whole point in writing for Helium is to write the best articles possible. If visitors see that the articles on this site are worth reading, they'll keep coming back for more. If your articles are constantly on the bottom of the ratings, then there's probably a good reason for it. Here are the biggest problems I encounter when rating other writers on Helium.

The first of these is substance; tell me, how can you possibly write a complete article about ANY subject in two or three sentences? Every time I see one of these two or three-line articles, the first thought that crosses my mind is that the writer is either lazy, or just trying to make a quick buck. Helium shouldn't reward people for writing these "quickies" by allowing them to stay at the top of the ratings using leapfrogs or anything else. It's a loophole that should be closed, because these two-line articles are ruining this site.

Writers who don't even bother to use spell check are guaranteed to receive the lowest rating from me. (Spell check is located at the left-hand bottom corner of the text field.) There's no excuse not to use the spell check tool before publishing your article. I also see an abundance of articles with bad grammar, fragmented ideas, incomplete sentences, and no attention whatsoever to article form. These articles SHOULD be rated low, because nobody will take this site seriously if all they read on Helium is garbage!

I don't want to discourage young writers who really want to improve their work. I also don't want to encourage writers who couldn't care less about the quality of their work to continue writing for Helium. The slogan for Helium is: "WHERE KNOWLEDGE RULES". Right now, it seems like those who can churn out the highest amount of "two-line articles" rule.

When should you care if you're rated low? Hopefully, before you start your next article!

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