NEW HELIUM CONTEST.

A new contest is up on the site at the moment with only 20 titles to write to.

http://www.helium.com/smf/index.php?topic=7996.0

Hey Rachel hope you are doing well. Well, seems you are! Well done on the great finishes in the contests. :-)

Thanks for the link.

seph

It's a smaller contest and perhaps those that want to have a chance will be given it in this one.

It's just the same thing, only with a smaller pool of topics to choose from!

I think the ranking is figured differently but I don't know.

It's slightly different in that you get "points" for being in the top half of a topic, but all the other stuff - number of articles, etc. is carried across from the current "competition". Quantity is still paramount.

True I did notice that.

I think that this is an improvement as you have to be in the top half to score points and being below half way gets points taken away. this goes a long way to eliminate those in the bigger comp that just posted any old rubbish just to get on the list.

The titles on offer are still a bit out of my area though so i dont think its for me but certainly a step in the right direction.

I think it is better too because there is less stress to churn out 60 articles in a week to get a high return. You can concentrate on areas of expertise and produce good quality and be rewarded for it.

But you'll end up having to bung out 20 articles a week - three per day in order to win because, just like the "big" competition, people will end up writing that many articles to go for the prize (so, this competition isn't even going to avoid the problem where members "research" articles from the Internet and post paraphrasing articles). While the scoring system is slightly more attractive than that of its big brother, the competition is still just going to appeal to those that take part in the current one. Anyone that goes out and works an 8 hour day is still going to have problems keeping up with those logged in 24 hours per day.

It's a step forward, yes. But it's such a small step forward, I wonder why they've even bothered when the other competition is so close to completion.

Yawn its all the same thing and all a waste of time, Helium still want quantity over quality and dont give a damn what sort of rubbish is written in an article. I've given up rating cos you dont have an option of saying that both the two you have to choose from are complete crap.
Most people I talk to think it is a waste of time putting any effort into the site because only those who are free all day every day can really succeed in getting anything out of it!

I agree with your last point, Ailran. It does seem to me that those who spend all day on the site are those that benefit more from it, in general. That's especially true with the competitions currently running.

I'm still finding it hard to see how Barbara's 'quest' for magazine quality writing ties in with the obvious "quantity over quality" goals of the competitions.