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Helium being a "Write, Read and Rate" site, we can not wish away the rating exercise. How to make rating more enjoyable (or at least more bearable) to the members, is one task to be tackled.

The second task is the wide spread concern found in discussion board - the need for improving the quality of rating so that too short articles, articles with grammatical/ spelling/ factual errors, poorly formated articles etc do not reach up to the top.

Another concern about poor quality articles getting better ranks could be something to do with the Rating Engine per se and the problem could be that all titles probably do not get through the requisite number of rating cycles.

So the improvements in rating system should have a 3-pronged approach (1)to make rating exercise more interesting, (2) to improve the quality of rating and (3) The software oriented improvements in the rating algorithm.

The following are my suggestions covering the first two areas:

(1) LET US HAVE SOME CHOICE IN SELECTING PREFERRED TOPICS FOR RATING:

We can not wish away rating of uninteresting and unfamiliar topics always. But at least, there should be an option for a member to choose some general topics of his interest for rating and at least 2/3rds of the article that he rates should be from his "preferred" topics.

(2) LET US HAVE THE OPTION TO READ AND EVALUATE ARTICLES OF OUR LIKING (OTHER THAN RATING):

In helium, I rarely go on my own to read an article of my liking (except when I am competing in Market Place or in Contests to see what others have already written). As I have to carry out the burden of doing the Ratings (which naturally involves lot of reading), where is the time for me to go and read something else?

But in other Blogging sites, we have fun. We read posts of others, we comment on them, we rank them and we receive feedback on our comments from the Authors too. Though Helium is not a typical blogging site, they can definitely take a cue from other blogging sites.

As a member, I should have the freedom to read a particular article of my choice and if I find it quite good, let me have an option to give it a good rating; write a few comments of appreciation to the author. If I find something wrong, let me flag it, make a criticism, give a poor rating. This I should be able to do outside the current rating rigor, without comparing with any other article. This sort of rating must be counted as part of or an extension of the existing rating methodology.

Another advantage in this method is that

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