I actually like the stars on helium because if the quality of a writer falls, so do their stars too. On other sites like ciao, you keep your dot regardless of quality and I believe having rating and writing stars is a good thing.

From what I read last night, the stars rely heavily on "quantity" too.

They actually depend on a combination of things which can be read here. The advantage from what I can see is that if you are inconsistent with your activity on the site, you can lose stars rather than keeping recognition from early use of the site.

http://www.helium.com/user/recognition

The rating stars rely on quantity of rates and time.

I'm still not sure why Helium has stars for rating. Member rates are unimportant to earnings.

"Writing stars" also require quantity of reviews. In essence they don't say much. I think if you're trying to indicate the quality of member in terms of writing, then there are probably better ways of doing it, but again, is it really necessary to rank members?

You say that in criticism although I am sure that in the past I have heard you dispute on sites like dooyoo about people and give and take in reading other people's reviews. I believe the stars gives a good indication of those members that work equally hard on both areas of rating and reading and is no different from the statistics shown on sites like ciao and dooyoo.

Dooyoo (and Ciao) are different because you rely on members reading your work to earn, which is why I think it's a handy figure to have. This isn't the case on Helium. Additionally, members can choose exactly what they want to read on Dooyoo (and Ciao). Therefore ranking members in rating and displaying this is a pointless exercise.

I think you are missing the point. Rating also helps other members since if we all refused to rate, the articles would sit in a pile and no one would gain anything. By contributing equally in both sides of rating and writing, I feel members get a better feel for the whole participating thing on Helium.

One point you seem to miss out on altogether is the earnings potential on Helium as opposed to ciao and dooyoo where earnings stagnate after the first couple of reads. On Helium, the articles earn for ever, and are for ever shifted by people writing new articles, and the whole pile being re-shuffled, giving every writer a chance for premium amount of reads.

What does earning potential have to do with stars?

Anyway, I'm not missing any point. The rating system on Helium is a joke and if Helium want the content ranked quickly and properly then this is the wrong way to go about it. Ratings pairs is a good idea, but you should be to select individual categories, not any old muck within channels. If there's one thing the negative Helium people seem to agree on, it's the rating system sucks ass.

In fact, I believe the rating ranking system was set up to, like Ciao, fool the people into doing something that's clunky, just like when the dot system was brought in to disguise the drop in payments. It's making folk think they have to rate when, in reality, they don't have to do any such thing. It doesn't serve any useful purpose to the members.