Recently there have been 2 discussion theads in the Hubpage forums about the quality of hub contents from Hubbers from India.

Jyothi Kothari, a popular Hubber from India has been actively discussing about identifying quality Hubbers from India; his very genuine concern was to remove a general perception amonst Hubbers that a lot many Indian hubbers are only fit for posting "sexy Bollywood babes", "Hot mallu actresses", "Sexy Indian aunties" picture galleries in their Hubs.

Please see these two discussion board threads on this issue:

Are there any Hubbers from India who don't have 'hot babe' hubs?

Hubbers from India

It is really a matter of concern to many hubbers that several Hubbers from India are posting  lots of "hot babe" picture galleries. In practical reality, such a stuff cannot be totally avoided in Internet arena where good, bad and ugly things are made available free for all. But large number of hub-postings predominantly with semi-clad Indian women pictures, is not going to auger well for any decent website in the long run. I am afraid it is Hubpages' administration too to blame, in not putting a curtain or atleast some sort of restriction to such hubs.

Why such sleazy contents are not frowned at? The reason is obvious. Sites like Hubpages take pride in the "volume" of visitors too, because it counts on the popularity of the site. (Recently Hubpages has entered into top 100 popular websites in USA). The "hot babes" hubs too contribute immensely to the traffic (though they may not contribute to  to earnings proportionately) and perhaps that's one of the reasons why sub-standard content is tolerated.

Web content site Helium (where there is no scope for posting photos) had been accepting content left and right from anyone above 13 years of age with word limits less than 400 words too, earlier, during growing stages if the site. Result? Plenty of substandard stuff in the site, seriously affecting the image and respectability of the site.

Helium web site has woken up to the reality of the need of improving the quality of contents all around and it is gradually bringing in more and more measures in that direction.  A huge volume of old and sub-standard articles are getting deleted in the site now.

Helium banning Indian writers now

Unfortunately, the cleansing exercise at Helium resulted in getting several Indian writers too banned and entry of new Indian writers got restricted in the site.One of the reasons suggested by helium was that "Indian English" as written by many new and young entrants to the site was below standard, particularly not suited to the predominantly American readers visiting the site.

Is Indians' writing standard so low?

The question is somewhat difficult to answer. There is no doubt India has a very large pool of English literate, educated people. Owing to British rule in the past, English has become one of the mainstay languages of India and the importance of having English knowledge is deeply drilled into every child by the parents.

But as regards quality of written English, there is a vast difference. Though there is a large pool of English writing talent available in India, perhaps this talent pool is somewhat middle aged, not too familiar and comfortable with computers and Internet.Even if the exposure to Internet is available, this talent pool may not be widely aware of the widespread opportunities available for making some nominal to decent side-Income through serious web-content writing.

At the other end, there are countless computer savvy Indian youngsters with "working knowledge" of English, for whom, casual "e-mail English" and "blogging English" (writing sentences without capitalization, with scant respect for grammar, use of abbreviations like LOL, IMHO, "be4", ASAP, mixing Hindi, Tamil and other local languages freely with English etc) are acceptable English styles for communication.

These youngsters do not mind jumping in to the bandwagon to write too casually in websites to make some quick-bucks for pocket money.  Perhaps it is the deluge from such writers that made Helium to ban writers from India. Unfortunately, by this extreme step, Helium has blocked entry of good and talented writers too from India.

Need for quality in websites in the long haul

Just like Helium getting awakened to the reality of the basic need for overall quality, many other websites, which are not too quality conscious so far have got to grow mature and look for quality content and filter out sub-standard stuff sooner or later.

The website Associated Content, has the policy of accepting articles to the site only after evaluating the first 3 submissions of a new writer.

The web-content site Suit101, apart from strict evaluation of a new writer at entry level, is extremely rigid and has military-like systems to editorially evaluate the submissions and to filter quality content. The site has very rigid writing standards, demanding a high degree of SEO disiplines in addition to several formatting and submission guidelines.

Suite101 is least attractive from design and presentation points of view; it has very limited scope for adding pictures and no scope for adding videos. It just can't stand beside HubPages in terms of looks, features and technology. But the site seems to have a very prestigious position in the Web world and a very high ranking in Google's search engine.

So, quality pays in the long run. Let us hope Hubpages too will start taking conscious action to weed out "sexy aunty hubs" and the like and start encouraging truly quality content.

Good Hub-writers from India have the added responsibility of pumping in quality content in the site in order to project the right image about India to the world.

Do you have good writing skill in English?

How about earning a side income by writing articles at Hubpages?

I welcome you to join Hubpages now