Heads up! This week, we are implementing a new quality-related policy change.
Until you have published five simultaneously-Featured Hubs, new Hubs that do not pass the Quality Assessment Process (QAP) will be unpublished rather than simply being not Featured.
The period before one has published five Featured Hubs will be known as Boot Camp, as Hubbers who have yet to reach the five Featured Hub milestone have to engage in some training and hard work before passing.
While this policy is designed primarily to help us deal more efficiently with spam, we hope it will provide new Hubbers with a gentle notice of HubPages’ high quality standards and to help them produce the sort content that is likely to succeed.
More on the Five Featured Hub Minimum to Fight Spam
Until you have published five Featured Hubs and passed Boot Camp, Hubs that would not otherwise be Featured will be moved back to an unpublished state after going through the QAP.
Additional details on how this works:
- Before you have met the five Featured Hub minimum, Hubs you publish that pass our Quality Assessment Process will still be published and Featured on the site. Only Hubs that do not pass the QAP will be transitioned back to draft mode.
- Once you have five Featured Hubs and have passed Boot Camp, Hubs you publish that do not pass the Quality Assessment Process will no longer be blocked from publication (though until you improve their quality, they will not be made available to search engines or be shown on related Hubs and Topic Pages).
- Hubs that were unpublished because of quality reasons before you met the five Featured Hub threshold will remain unpublished until you change them and re-publish them (we recommend making significant improvements or else they’ll just not be Featured, which is somewhat of a waste).
- Should you reach a point at which you have five Featured Hubs but then dip down to a point at which you only have four Featured Hubs, you will still be able to publish Hubs that aren’t Featured (in other words, you only have to prove yourself once).
This new policy will keep spammers from progressing on HubPages by preventing their work (which very rarely passes the minimum quality threshold required to be Featured) from being published.
A New Accolade for High Quality Hubbers
In addition to using Boot Camp to hinder spammers, we are using it to reward awesome content creators on HubPages who really do want to improve their skills and make a name for themselves online. We are doing this via the introduction of a new Accolade that highlights the number of Featured Hubs you have.
Our Featured Hub Accolade, shaped like a bullhorn (because we like to amplify Featured Hubs by making them available to search engines and featuring them throughout our site) is HubPages’ newest badge indicating a Hubber’s ability to create useful, valuable, and high quality content.
You will first earn the Accolade as soon as you reach the five Featured Hub minimum. The Accolade’s number will continue to climb as you create and publish more Featured Hubs. As we care ten times as much about the great articles people write, we’re far more interested in seeing how many Featured Hubs authors have versus their total number of Hubs. For this reason we find the Featured Hub Accolade to be a helpful reference point (not to mention a good motivator). We hope you find it to be rewarding, informative, and motivating, too!
HubPages Blog 
I think this is one of the best decisions I’ve seen in a long time in regards to working to improve the quality of the HubPages site! I will watch with both interest and curiosity to see the results.
I have a question. As you’ve said, if a person doesn’t have 5 featured hubs, the new ones would be unpublished rather than not being featured.
So, does this imply that existing hubbers who have just 1 or 2 featured hubs would see the effect as well or is it just the new comers that would be affected?
If it’s going to be everyone, then I’m super-excited as this could pave the way for overall improvement as we won’t be interlinking to a lot of spam (even though there will be a few)
This is a welcome improvement and I feel will raise the quality of hubs here.
Yippiee 🙂
I’ll get the accolade as I’ve 8 consecutive featured hubs 🙂
Great decision, spammers will be deterred and anyone thinking HubPages is just a quick and easy money-making scheme will also be sorely disappointed.
Does this policy apply to older accounts that have a lot of unfeatured hubs?
Specifically, I came across a hubber whose account page said number of published hubs = 12, but there were only two titles clickable on her page. That means she has 10 other hubs that are obviously not featured. So are her unfeatured hubs also now unpublished? Or are they just unfeatured, but still published and somehow accessible?
I see this situation a lot with hubbers who write poetry.
Great move toward creating and maintaining a high quality site for motivated writers. Bravo!
I recently saw on my account that I received a new accolade – that I have had at least 100 simultaneously featured hubs. Never heard of this accolade before so it was interesting and informative to read this post. Thank you for talking about this.
Excellent idea for not only helping improve HubPages as a whole, but also for helping new authors to know what it takes to publish online. Great job, HubPages!
This will surely help fight spammers and low quality hubs from plastering HubPages and consequently raise the overall quality of HP.
Also there is no reason to write hubs which won’t be read anyway because they aren’t good.
Thumbs up.
This will provide a new impetus to the serious hubbers,to write content rich hubs.It is quality not quantity that matters the most.The other day I was thinking to remove my hubs which are not featured.This decision should not be mendatory.But I support it.
This may irritate some people, but I think it’s an awesome idea that should really help combat all the spam! I think it will really help improve the overall quality of the site.
How will the Accolade be used for hubs already published and featured?
I gather this is for new hubbers?
look forward to these changes, we’ll see how it comes out in practice
Amazing concept. Can’t wait to see the quality soar!
I like the way you’re doing things. Every time I feel like I’m finally doing what I’m supposed to be doing, someone else who has less knowledge and spams seem to make their mark on what I feel is my territory. Thanks for taking care of us hubbers.
This sounds like a great idea, there already seem to be higher quality hubs on the hopper. It’s slightly disappointing that the accolade doesn’t show how many hubs are actually featured. Mine says at least 25 when all 36 are featured. I’d almost prefer not to have the accolade than to make it seem like some are not featured. Sorry if this sounds picky, but it’s honest feedback. Thanks for your continued work on making adjustments to HP.
Thank you for the kind words, everyone!
To address some of the repeated questions that have arisen:
1. This applies to anyone who has fewer than five Featured Hubs
2. The Featured Hub Accolade has been automatically awarded to those who have already earned it 😀
Wow!…this just so awesome!…spammers down the sewer they can maneuver!…:D…awesome!
Yes! I love this idea and I think it is such a great way to promote high quality and help new hubbers at the same time. I noticed the new accolade I am very happy about that 😀
Hi, it’s so interesting and great decision. It will help improve the quality of hubpages and also the skill of hubbers. I am looking forward to passing the boot camp and get many Accolade 😀
This is a great improvement to the present system. The site will have good content and little spam. Way to go, team!
Your system has an unfair bias against art and music coverage. I’ve worked as a writer for years and it bumped back a fairly decent album review for no particularly valid reason.
System need a little work IMO.
I appreciate your feedback, DMueller! Our quality system is definitely a work in progress that is constantly evolving. We appreciate your patience with us!
Sometimes perfectly good reviews are not Featured on HubPages because they are generally short and do not include a lot of original media. I think this is why many entertainment-related subjects in particular suffer.
This is excellent step towards quality
Actually I was ignorant of this new feature and was curious to ask someone regarding this new accolade. But now I got the answer and I am satisfied with your explanation. I am lucky that I got 50 Featured Hubs Accolade recently. I hope to earn more in the near future and trying hard with that mission in mind.
Great!
Great idea, and I hope I pass with my first Hub! Oh, there’s a link error on the page – the “Featured Hubs” link beings be to a 404 page.
Thanks for bringing that to our attention, Christian!
I do appreciate your efforts in introducing this accolade. In this connection, I have a suggestion, which I have raised as forum thread today. It is regarding introduction of a new accolade in recognition of achieving higher level of featuring of our hubs. That details are there in the thread. I wish you give a serious attention to my request and consider it positively.
Well, I’m a newbie and I hope that this turns into an income stream for me! I consider myself to be a good writer and tend to be a bit controversial so, here’s to shakin’ things up! A big od Texas HOWDY to all!!
good initiative by hubpages..this will be an advantage for quality hubs..
I like this development. The stricter the better the quality.
I’m in Boot Camp and still have 2 hubs to go… I’m up for it!!
This is great news indeed because some of us spend hour trying to to give our readers the information they need. And who else doesn’t want to appear on Google/Yahoo or some well known search engines. Let the writers write and the spammers be blocked out…This means Hub Pages will not be banned by Google and will continue to one of highest ranking site!
I’m very new and this sounds fair to me!
I hope, this will be beneficial to quality conscious hubbers, as it is a filtering device.
I’m new to hubpages and this sounds good to me!
good decision to protect from spammers
I am very new to hubpages, but I appreciate the initiative of this checkpoint as it will not only couter attack against spammers but motivate the newcomers to improve their performance to pass the QAP.
if you don’t pay then talking about other products or people is not spam. you can’t do this it is not right
in fact you would have to pay a lot of money you are not our bosses what is this crap. this is supposed to be free lance writing site
HubPages is not a freelance writing site. We are a free writing platform where authors have the opportunity to earn shared ad revenue if they comply with our quality guidelines. We do not own or purchase content.
Thanks, I really want to a good writer and this is great training for me.
how can I get QAP as soon as possible?
I’m in Boot Camp and still have 5 hubs to go… I’m up for it!!
I appreciate this Five Featured Hub Barrier to Fight Spam. Great!!!