An alternate proposal to promote rating as well as writing

For those interested in Helium in either a positive or negative way, this discussion on the Helium boards is interesting to say the least.

An alternate proposal to promote rating as well as writing

I think it's especially interesting for those that aren't perhaps that active around Helium and I'm aware this is a small part of a wider issue that's being pondered by the Helium staff.

I do have my own thoughts on this and will post later, but it'd be nice to swee what you guys think and if you've spotted the same thing I have...

Well I have put in my tuppence.

I might be tempted to join you!

I was going to try to stimulate debate here though.

Ciao's Favourite Member wrote:

I might be tempted to join you!

I was going to try to stimulate debate here though.

Wheres the fun in that

However,

# rating stars do not work and encourage quantity rating over quality (the equivalent of skimming.

# while the rating system insists on me reading stupid articles I have no interest in I cannot rate for more than ten minutes.

# as such I run out of skips far too early.

# rating is important but to make it mandatory on helium at the moment would mean a huge loss of membership.

There's also a 34 page thread on only paying active writers and one of the mooted suggestions involves taking moey from inactive members for redistribution. I'm not going to go all the way through that though.

But they won't let you close your account and remove your work!

Bastards!

My tuppenceworth is now posted as well.

You've got to laugh though.

"The lack of rating/accuracy of rating os the members' fault" (I paraphrase).

Ho, ho, ho.

Out of passing interest I lookd at the thread, can spot Dave comments (the one complaining of brain ache was pretty much ignred) but not Aaron comments. If the posts are a reflection of the writing style of some members does not matter what rating system you have I woud not waste time reading such pompous language.

atticusuk wrote:

Out of passing interest I lookd at the thread, can spot Dave comments (the one complaining of brain ache was pretty much ignred) but not Aaron comments. If the posts are a reflection of the writing style of some members does not matter what rating system you have I woud not waste time reading such pompous language.

Words for words sake seems to be the order of the day. I am not thick (I hope) but there are a lot of words and no solutions. When you do put forward ideas they are either passed over or shrugged off. I know oth myself and Aaron have really had a go at that thread but have been largely ignored. The zealotry by some members is simply unfathomable too!

To be fair, the blind faith shown by some members of this board meant I wasn't particularly surprised by the amount of zealots on Helium's own boards.

It is funny that everyone seems to agree that there's an issue with the rating (people fall into one of these camps: not enough rating is done, the rating is not as effective as it should be or the rating mechanics is flaws or any combination of those three) then proceed to talk around the issue, not debate the issue.

There's some Jim29th-style waffling going on there!

For what its worth I think the rating system is pretty crap and I'm the travel steward so I'm not really toeing the party line.

However, I have always maintained that people who have plenty of articles to post over may as well do that because they are squeezing some more cash out of reviews that probably don't earn much now anyway.

I feel that the travel section is a bit different because usually its people writing about their own experiences and many of the other sections are quite factual and this is where Helium falls down because people are claiming quite different things to be 'facts'. That's one of the reasons that Helium loses credibility. People are rating on writing style rather than whether the answer is a good one - and then the dross gets to the top.

fizzywizzy wrote:

For what its worth I think the rating system is pretty crap and I'm the travel steward so I'm not really toeing the party line.

However, I have always maintained that people who have plenty of articles to post over may as well do that because they are squeezing some more cash out of reviews that probably don't earn much now anyway.

I feel that the travel section is a bit different because usually its people writing about their own experiences and many of the other sections are quite factual and this is where Helium falls down because people are claiming quite different things to be 'facts'. That's one of the reasons that Helium loses credibility. People are rating on writing style rather than whether the answer is a good one - and then the dross gets to the top.

Very true and to be fair the travel cat seems to be better ranked generally whereas nearly all the other cats must be getting rated on structure and length.

Also to add information points from the debate (and all focussing on the rating mechanism, not the effectiveness of rating done within it):

• Unlimited 'skips' can lead to rating abuse (but not necessarily so), so won't implement this function
  
• Helium won't explain what that means
  
• However, apparently, if you leave the rating mechanism and return to it, you have ten brand new 'skips' to play with
  
• The members (aka community) have to take responsibility and rate more (according to Helium)
  

And as anyone could point out - more rating doesn't mean better results - it just means reinforcing the poor rating that already goes on

Agreed.

A counter argument that was put forward was that, if people ARE having issues with the rating system (in whatever form they may be), they're not going to encourage or advise other members to invest time in it, are they?

I guess the thread has run its course. I'm not sure if that's because we're now going round in circles of if it's because no-one can understand what Tenebris is on about