eHow Sucks

I thought I'd title this with a nice search-friendly phrase for others to find.  So, random web visitor, here's the deal.  First you should know that I used to work for the company that currently owns eHow and I even worked on that project as a senior engineer in migrating it from CVS/Java/JSP to VSS (then briefly, Subversion) / ASP.NET.  Honestly, that was fun, but it's become more than an annoyance for me, and I want it to go away.

Or rather, I wish I didn't have any articles on it, because I could care less that they're trying to "clean it up".  The way they're going about it is completely asinine unless pissing off random authors is an item on their checklist.

Just today, I received a third message for their ongoing war on users:

Hi NeilO,

As you may have noticed, we have been making great strides to clean up the eHow article library. This ongoing process is to improve the quality of the site and ensure that we are providing the best resource to our visitors looking to learn and accomplish a task. This email has been sent to you because one or more of your articles have been removed from your account for violating eHow submission guidelines. Please find a list of all affected titles below with reasons for removal next to each of them.

- Title: How to Eat Hot Dogs, Reason: Blog/Opinion
- Title: How to Properly Watch Family Guy, Reason: Common Sense
- Title: How to Reach Movie Stardom, Reason: OTHER
- Title: How to Sleep in ASP using ADO
- Title: How to Use a Restroom Incorrectly, Reason: Not In How To Format
- Title: How to Watch Michael Moore Movies, Reason: Common Sense

Note: If the reason provided says "Legacy Rejections," this means that the article was moderated and deemed unsuitable during a time when reasons for removal were not marked on articles. Furthermore, if you see the word "Other" as a reason, then the article had many violations and could not be listed.

eHow.com is known for its reliable online solutions and in order to protect the reputation of the site and our highly regarded community, we must ensure that everyone is adhering to the eHow submission guidelines. To get a thorough knowledge of our submission guidelines, please click here for more information. If you'd like to discuss any issues related to this article sweep, please join our Forum discussion.

Thank you for your understanding.
-The eHow Team

You're welcome, asshats. I wish I could thank you for souring my day, but the only recourse you've given me is to jump into your forums. The email itself is sent from a randomly generated address that cannot be responded to, and of course the sender is a "faceless corporation" signing off with the team name. Sarcasm kicking in: I'm sure the "team" is behind this, because last I heard there was no techs left on it.

Now I'll be the first to admit these articles aren't tutorial gold, but the content wasn't bad.  I would show you that, I really wish I could republish them somewhere, but the wonderful "eHow Team" destroys without recourse and so I am left with a tombstone and no body.  Their reasoning for purging these articles will no doubt apply to all but the money-makers left in my profile, and thus I have no choice but to remove all of them myself.  That is the only way I can be sure that I can keep what I wrote.

Let's go through these reasons one by one so I can gain some small satisfaction in slamming them.


- Title: How to Eat Hot Dogs, Reason: Blog/Opinion

No argument here, that was an opinion.  At the time there was no rules against posting a how-to that had a personality.  Sure, I'm telling you how to eat hot dogs by my standards, preferred condiments, cooking style, and so on, but how is that a bad thing?  I wonder if this has anything to do with them locking the titles down so only one article can have a particular title?  In that case, I probably wasn't selling enough wieners.

- Title: How to Properly Watch Family Guy, Reason: Common Sense

Wrong!  As they say on HN or Slashdot: RTFA.  This one was subjective too, and had to do with the method I instructed not the result.  The process of how to do something is just as important as the result.  In this case I prescribed bacon, mojitos, and friends who knew the show and the quotes


- Title: How to Reach Movie Stardom, Reason: OTHER

Wow, I just wrote this one a couple months ago, quite honestly to promote FanSiter.  I spent some time on it, wrote quite a bit of material, and produced a workable theory on a way to become an actor celebrity.  They give no reason, because they have no grounds for removing the article.  There is no rule to linking back to a site with more information regardless of if you own it or not.  In this case, I linked back to a survey I did through Mechanical Turk: 9 Ways to Stardom.

- Title: How to Sleep in ASP using ADO

This is great.  They leave off the reason entirely, because I created this soley for the good of the programming community after spending time searching for the answer.  I conclude it simply didn't make money and therefore took up unnecessary bandwidth.  Don't worry eHow, next time I'll put useful information for software engineers on StackOverflow.

- Title: How to Use a Restroom Incorrectly, Reason: Not In How To Format

I have no way to refute this claim, but it sounds fishy.  I vaguely remember writing this based on co-workers bathroom stories at Demand Media.  Maybe it hit too close to home?  My personal, albeit generally flawed, recollection is a series of increasingly ridiculous actions (put in their step format) one could take to do their business wrong.  Purely comedic value, but Orwellian societies don't appreciate amusement structured on their system.

- Title: How to Watch Michael Moore Movies, Reason: Common Sense

Duh, RTFA again.  I wrote this, because his new movie was coming out and it was an attempt to be topical and see if any views would come of it.  I'm not sad it went, but cripes man: it wasn't any more about seeing the movie than listening is about hearing someone talk.

Now with that all over with, I can try to get something useful out of my day.  However, I do leave off with the advice that you never write anything for eHow.com, at least under its current management.  That is, unless, you don't care about being harassed or losing work.  I suppose, then, if you are in the business of writing opinionated, spammy articles for monetary gain alone you need not have any qualms.  They are an untrustworthy but well-indexed money-making platform.  For honest folk, go hit up WikiHow or Yahoo! Answers.