For those of you who have discovered article writing as a way to get worldwide internet exposure, take a bow. Welcome to the International Brotherhood of Article Writers. As part of this brotherhood, you should be aware of some article etiquette, particularly as pertains to supporting and encouraging your article brothers. One of these etiquettes has to do with rating articles.

Writing articles—at least content-rich and information-packed ones—takes a lot of time and a lot of hard work. It is true that a key motive behind article writing is to bring visitors to one’s website and as such to get these visitors interested in the products and services of the writer. This is one of my principle aims. However, this is not the only objective.

When I first started writing articles back in December of 2005, I had no website even though I did have services to provide. The initial purpose of my writing was to give vent to my creative and expressive side as well as to help educate others on topics that I was familiar with. Shortly after I began churning out articles, I got the idea for my website http://www.mathbyjoe.com. Based on the number of views I’ve been getting as well as the sales from my website, I can say that article writing has been a big success for me.

Having said that, I now want to get back to the point of this article. As an article reader you should keep in mind that the author—at least for the most part—puts a lot of thought and time into his work. If you read an article that you did not like for whatever reason, you can do one of two things: go on to the next one, or give the author a bad rating. Doing the latter is probably not the best thing as a bad rating sends a negative ripple through the international brotherhood. Truly, the best thing to do is to leave the article without the negative rating. After all, if something is bad, then people will know it’s bad. You don’t have to go out and promulgate this to the international community.

To drive my point home, I give you a specific example regarding ratings on my articles. Every now and then, some reader comes along, and for whatever reason, gives me a one star rating on some of my articles. Now I do not think I am the best thing out there, but I do know one thing: I put a lot of care and hard work into all my articles. Although I am somewhat biased, I really don’t think any one of my articles deserves a one star, or very poor, rating. The only conclusion I can draw then is that whoever keeps doing this is either jealous, or just a lousy judge of writing. It would be difficult to believe that this same rating that pops up every now and then is coming from a different source as the fingerprint is always the same.

Since these poor ratings peeve the heck out of me, they drain some of my creative juices which could be used to write more content-rich articles that can help others. So folks, be courteous and polite. If you really like an article, help the author and give him your vote of confidence; he really deserves it, particularly if he is writing articles for all the right reasons. But if you don’t, then don’t be a party crasher. Forgo the bad rating. In so doing, you confirm your good standing in the International Brotherhood of Article Writers.

Joe Pagano