The web appears to be full, at least today, of anti-Helium posts; or at least, someone is drawing attention to them in a rapid, rabid manner. Allow me to clarify:

As many of you know, I am a channel steward on Helium.com; this means simply that I volunteer my time to help improve the site and organize my particular area of expertise, Parenting and Pregnancy. I also recruit new stewards, help edit new articles, and do my own writing of course. I’ve been a member since April, 2008, and published almost 200 articles on-site. Good ones, too.

Most of the individuals who lodge complaints are those who cannot string together a single coherent sentence, believe that profanity is so common as to be an accepted form of prose (in nearly every one of those incoherent sentences), those who cannot spell “cat” or any other word, and those who have no clear idea of grammar or even punctuation. These people write a couple articles and claim foul because they haven’t earned a single penny or because they don’t “understand” how the site works.

Some want to delete their accounts immediately, and move on to what they call “greener pastures” – the problem is that they can’t write so it doesn’t matter where they publish, they will likely always whine about not making money or not being appreciated or something else.

Frankly, this rubbish should indeed be deleted – it does little but drag down the quality of the site itself and is embarrassing to read, let alone have my name associated with.

I looked at a couple of these complaint postings this morning. I even emailed someone but it bounced back – there never is any place to post comments or even a profile of these individuals. They apparently aren’t looking for ways to improve, they just want to gripe.

If Helium.com is so bad, why are there so many successful writers there? Something like 100,000, ten percent of whom are very active? Why, then, have so many Heliumites sold articles to paper publishers, won contests, and are featured all over the Internet?

Obviously, some wanna-be writers are just too lazy or untalented to make the cut – yes, that’s harsh, but someone had to say it.