THE ALGORITHM BEHIND DISAPPEARING RATING STARS!

(CAUTION: This article was written for humor and is not intended to hurt any one. This article was originally written when Helium announced the first Rewar-athon program and there were lots of complaints about the rating star allocation.)

After the announcement of the Rewardathon program by Helium, a virtual Pandora box has been opened. Many writers who jumped up with initial enthusiasm, became a bit cautious after the "need for 3-stars" in rating as a prerequisite on the closing date of the program as a criterion for making money, sank into them.

Those who were doing no rating or sloppy rating treating it as a boring chore to be gone through woke up to the stark reality and started doing rating as a serious business. And this is where they were in for a shock! Those who had no stars in rating were doing more and more rating either to find a star appearing and then disappearing without a trace! Those who had one star, pumped in more and more to get the 2nd one and lo and behold, it comes only to vanish the next day.

Panic!

The discussion forum in Helium got flooded with complaints, worries and accusations. People wanted to know about the logic behind the stars appearing and disappearing; wanted to know why there is no transparency , why there is no "counter" to show how may articles one has rated (like we have for how many articles we have written). Of course, there were replies from senior members and also Helium staff - some vague, some convincing and some slightly arrogant too. What mostly said was

* you have to rate regularly, consistently with QUALITY. - QUALITY of rating is one of the criterion for stars appearing and lack of it for disappearing

* The system has "statistical model" for gaging quality inbuilt into it. - Don't ask us why and how it works - it is a guarded trade secret; simply keep doing quality rating of more and more articles.

Some got convinced; some got skeptic; some simply went back to burn the midnight oil to do "quality" rating. Some came back and complained that they could not get any improved results after consistent rating. Some said it is fine and clear now; they are getting their stars, no problem. Some posted accusation that Helium is keeping the trump card to deny many writers the Rewardathon money by intentionally keeping the confusion in rating star system!

Having participated in some of these discussion forums and throwing my own accusations and criticism in

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