if u pay people to write hubs, make sure they know english

1. 67

   3bagsfullposted 15 years ago

   I just read the hub challenge that asked us to flag hubs that were poor in quality, etc
   
   so, out of curiosity I went to the Hubs section and hit latest and ....
   
   holy cwap, batman!!!
   
   there is so much junk here. It is clear that many either wrote a hub in their native language and translated it via Google translate and came up with pseudo-english
   
   or they sort of know english and just gave it the old college try
   
   regardless, maybe we all should spend some time each day doing a bit of flagging

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      Lady_Eposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Interesting Point but not everyone writes for the purpose of earning money.  A few people use HP to develop their writing skills and they get better as they continue to write. Such people are just looking for feedback/comments.

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   2. 61

      tantrumposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Why are you so mean?! Is someting wrong with your life? Everybody has the right to write. this is a free page and you are not the owner. I think flagging is awful, if it's only because you don't like what you read...

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         Mark Knowlesposted 15 years agoin reply to this

         I beg to differ. It is in all our interests to keep the quality of content high in order to maintain the site's authority with the search engines. The less obvious crap the better. The sites authority makes a difference to how well we rank and therefore affects the amount of money we can make. I have no wish to let some spammer affect the amount of money I make.
         
         I do flag obvious spam or stuff that is obviously stolen or incomprehensible English.

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         1. 61

            tantrumposted 15 years agoin reply to this

            I understand what you say.  And i'm for flagging spam. But poorly written hubs ,should stay for people to practice and write better. They deserve a chance. And as I say before, the is free

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               Mark Knowlesposted 15 years agoin reply to this

               The what is free?
               
               Although, there is a difference between poorly written and incomprehensible. I would not flag a hub for being poorly written.

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                  tantrumposted 15 years agoin reply to this

                  It's free to sign in, to write, to comment in forums in hubpages?...Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the way I got here...By he way, i loved your hub about gazpacho. Just the way i used to have in Marbella. Left a comment

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         2. 65

            Mishaposted 15 years agoin reply to this

            What Mark said. And yes there is an easily discernible difference between just poorly written hub and crap.

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               tantrumposted 15 years agoin reply to this

               Agree ... End of the story 

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      getpaidtopostposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      I said this a few days ago, its all about quality and not quantity, that is why i don't bother with the hubchallenge.IMO
      
      I like to spend a good 3-4 hours on just researching a topic, then another few hours writing.
      
      

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2. 60

   AsherKadeposted 15 years ago

   I was afraid of this happening just to fill the quota of hub challenge. Hub challenge is great, don't get me wrong, but it can makepeople churcn out some crazy no-quality crap just to make their quota. That's why I don't peronally involve myself in it because I want to write based on conviction, and inspiration, not quota...

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   1. 0

      wordscribe41posted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Bear in mind, however, you can do both.  I work my tail off to produce quality hubs for the challenge, same as I did before the challenge.  There are ALWAYS poor hubs, I read them everyday, outside of the challenge.  And, there are many, many wonderfully constructed, high quality hubs being created daily within the challenge daily.  The variety of quality in the challenge is merely a microcosm of all of HubPages in my opinion.

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      Uninvited Writerposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      No...people have been doing this all along and if it's not tagged hub challenge it's not part of the hub challenge.

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3. 75

   Lissieposted 15 years ago

   You're wrong there - there has always been crap hubs - probably from day 1 and certainly for longer than the hub challenge!

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      sandra rinckposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      Definitely.  I heard a lot of squawks from the last hub challenge on the forums and those stayed in the hub challenge thread.  Other than that, It did not effect anyone not involved. 
      
      Anyways, I think after some of those people with not so good hubs have more time to write, they get better over time.  I know I did. 

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4. 67

   3bagsfullposted 15 years ago

   the question is
   
   will these terrible hubs just get shoved naturally to the bottom of the pile or do we need to take the time to flag them?

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      sandra rinckposted 15 years agoin reply to this

      More then likely, they will just leave because they wont get any traffic because they will place low in a search engine etc... but if they stay (not being flagged) but if other hubbers give then nice suggestions, then they can get better.
      
      And no, I don't think it does anything.  Do you know how many hubbers place well in search engines?  Seems at least once or twice a week, I end up googling something unrelated to hubpages and find a hubpage hub.
      
        I think the only problem with bad hubbers is spamming.

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5. 62

   Lisa HWposted 15 years ago

   A lot of really bad Hubs could be made acceptable (or acceptable-ish) if the Hubber would just run a spell-checker.  Grammar checkers don't get always get things right, but at least they call attention to potential problem spots.  I never get why people who have difficulty with spelling and/or grammar just merrily post their atrocious grammar and spelling without trying to fix at least some problems.  Most of us have the occasional typo or other problem we miss, but there are those Hubs that have about 20 sixth-grade words spelled incorrectly in each short paragraph.
   
   I can't even make myself vote them down because I feel bad for the person who apparently doesn't realize how bad the Hub is.      Really, though, there's no excuse not to use the spell-checker (particularly if one knows he's spelling-challenge). 

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6. 62

   Lisa HWposted 15 years ago

   I think a lot of people would be uncomfortable offering feedback on someone's writing (rather than feedback on the message in their Hub).  I'd never presume to critique someone's writing.    Maybe people who would appreciate feedback on their writing technique should add a text capsule with a brief note to say that; or they could mention it in their profile.   I think lots of people are more than willing to try to be helpful and supportive of others, but many would just feel too presumptuous to critique without being asked.

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7. 0

   Lady_Eposted 15 years ago

   I should change my last sentence to "comments". Comments such as: "that was interesting", "thanks for sharing", "I enjoyed reading your Hub" and other comments.  This is encouraging to such people and spurs them on to write more. (Obviously, we are not here to criticize people's grammar and that's something I don't do either, even if I notice it).

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8. 77

   Uninvited Writerposted 15 years ago

   And to answer the original question, I have come across some hilarious hubs that obviously used a translation program

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9. 71

   Inspirepubposted 15 years ago

   It is a condition of use for HubPages that your Hubs are written in English, and are of a certain minimum quality standard.
   
   If people break the conditions of use, they deserve to be flagged.
   
   There is nothing mean about saying "hey, this person is breaking the rules ..."
   
   We all KNOW the rules. We have to tick to say we have read and understood them before we publish our first Hub.
   
   Play by the rules, and you won't get flagged.
   
   Jenny

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10. 59

    Pamda Manposted 15 years ago

    My, my, my... This is discrimination against non-native speakers! Oh fail!

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11. 73

    soni2006posted 15 years ago

    Even I don't like crap hubs and I know there are a lot of them here at hubpages  but as others have said, it is not with all of them. Some new writers join hubpages in order to improve their writing skills and in order to get feedback in form of comments, so flagging all of them would not solve the problem, rather it would inhibit startup writers from writing. Who knows one day they will become an outstanding writer.....

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       Lady_Eposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       Thank you Soni.

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          soni2006posted 15 years agoin reply to this

          It's my pleasure mam.

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    emievilposted 15 years ago

    Personally, I'll welcome comments on my hubs. Feel free to flag any of them anytime. Gives me the chance to see my hubs as other people see them. Plus another pair of eyes won't hurt in terms of developing better quality hubs.

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    Jane@CMposted 15 years ago

    Yesterday I read a hub by a fairly popular hubber on the forums.  I assumed (wrongly) that since this hubber had so many fans, that the writing would be good.  This person didn't even use caps at the beginning of a sentence. The hub just wasn't good.  So I wouldn't assume that all the poorly written hubs are by people who don't speak English, although I agree, there are those who you can tell that English is not their first language.

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       Lisa HWposted 15 years agoin reply to this

       I don't even mind if a Hub is obviously written by someone for whom English is a second language, and if there are a few "flaws" in an otherwise well written Hub.  To me, if I "get it" that the person is writing in his second language, other readers will too.  It's the English-as-a-first-language Hubs that are written without caps, punctuation, decent spelling, etc. that I have a hard time with.  Those are the ones that make you immediately assume the writer isn't too "swift" and doesn't know what he's talking about it.  People either don't bother with grammar, in which case they need to know that writers do need to bother; or else they never learned eighth-grade English, in which case they should get a book from the library if they want to write for the public and be taken seriously.  They're also the ones that will make searchers not bother clicking on HubPages if it comes up in a search.  (If I search for something and get a Helium article I won't even bother - and I've written for Helium.     )

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          Jane@CMposted 15 years agoin reply to this

          You are right.  I will not waste my time reading hubs that are of poor quality & lack grammatical skills.

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14. 67

    3bagsfullposted 15 years ago

    I guess what I was addressing was the issue of the poor quality - incomprehensible articles that are being dumped here
    
    There are those out on the web that are selling/teaching plans to make money off the web
    
    The idea is that
    1) content is king and thus you need content
    2) that if you get content up on the web, that a reader/searcher will (automatically) click on (google) ads and the content creator/provider will make tons and tons of money
    3) content providers need others to create content for their hub pages, lenses, blogs etc etc so they go to freelance sites and pay writers for articles -- they pay for this "cost" from all the money they make through adsense
    
    but what happens is the articles are written by providers all over the world and they run the text written in their original language through a translator and the translation is garbage.
    
    Those hubs bog down hubs written by those who have a different approach (imho) -- the buyer of the crap content loses money because I just don't see how anyone will click on the ad and there is some nice irony in that
    
    however, for the others who are striving to use hp with a different approach, it bogs down the system and lessens the strength of hp

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