HELIUM GETS CAUGHT OUT!

Posted a review recently about a product Ive recently bought only to have an email from Helium suggesting that the review was too long and had been rejected.

SO away I went back to the review itself and discovered it was 2251 (251 words over their 2000 limit apparently...)

Yet in the same category another posted review I had done was 3000 over...Who's kidding who Helium.

So away I went to email Helium and was told that the person in the department who read my first review didnt like the length and felt the need to reject it. Have I succumbed to reduce my review by 251? Nah and its now showing.

I'm not sure how this means they got "caught out".

Anyway, to be honest, the first guy was probably doing you favour. IMO, Helium, as a site is set up for shorter pieces... the members are conditioned for shorter pieces and articles aren't helped in the readability stakes by the layout which can make longer articles harder to read.

It could be argued that 2000 words is too long. I believe their own writing standards suggest between 600 and 1500 words? Something like that.

Caught out for the fact that simply their rules aren't matching what is appearing on the site. Through the contests and Marketplace section Ive copied and pasted some of the reviews JUST TO CHECK that some of the intended word counts have been taken aboard; most people seem to forget this when they are submitting their reviews.

I think if Helium are going to impose a shorter word limit they should state it clearly rather than myself or others to be rejected on the grounds of too many words and then finding within same categories of Product Reviewing, other reviews appear to be longer than the maximum allocation.

I don't know that there are hard and fast rules as yet regards word counts, just "writing standards" or some such gubbins probably posted to appease the budding writers on Helium.

Of course, what'll probably happen is that they'll implement a hard coded word count of about 1500 words in a month or so's time and enforce that rule retroactively, meaning your reviews will get deleted. They have a habit of enforcing "writing" rules retroactively...

Oh, I sound like Phil

I wonder if there are other instances of Helium being caught out.. Feel free to voice them here!

Oh, let's see...

Helium run a competition which they say is based on quality, but in actual fact, encourages churning where winning members were posting over 100 articles per week!

Helium members claim that winners of said competition act with integrity, but really all they did was paraphrase articles that had been previously posted or entries from Wikmipedia (and other such sources).

Caught. Red. Handed.

I'm sure you can point this kind of stuff out about all the sites though. (Ciao not rewarding the writing standards they set out, for example).