I've been doing ratings for the past two rounds, and I wanted to draw attention to the ratings system for writers who may not be familiar with it (I haven't been keeping up with the thread for the past few weeks, so if a similar post was made-- well, I guess I wouldn't be sorry because it's an important subject). This influences whether you are actually getting paid one share per thousand words, or less. This is the standard devtome rating rubric (http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=devtome_rater#rating_method). It has just CHANGED, and weights links and references for non-fiction article at 30/99 instead of 10/99. While we use an article as an example, the AUTHOR is also being rated.

I've noticed that even when I'm finding really neat articles, I end up docking them a lot of points because of the lack of links and references, and pictures. No links, references, or pictures? Bam, minus 39 points (used to be minus 19 points), right there. It takes a little extra time, but going through and putting in some links to resources, or articles that corroborate or contrast your opinion, and giving sources for your facts is really useful and important. How do we know where all your figures are coming from, otherwise? This is a hypertextual medium, and I'd encourage writers to take advantage of it. Adding a couple of pictures (you can find CC-BY-SA pictures at commons.wikimedia.org or via the search feature at creativecommons.org) also gives you up to 9 more points. Do yourself a favor.

On the other hand, don't rely on sprinkling in a few links and pictures to raise your rating. If I'm assigned an article that's a typo-laden, short-hand outline (which happens fairly often), I'm going to rate accordingly.

I just want to put this out there so people who are writing good stuff can maximize their earnings.