Watch Out. E-How Is Deleting Articles Again For More Ridiculous Reasons....

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All of you who write for eHow get ready. They are "cleaning up their site" anew and are deleting members' hard work left and right and this time they are giving their reasons for deletions. Here are some of mine they deleted with reasons included. How To Get Your Writing Published Instantly. They said this was deleted because it was "poorly written". That was an article about the site YouPublish. I could have seen it if they had decided this was spam, since it's the only site I mentioned in the piece, but I didn't think it was poorly written (I've had over 10 years experience as a professional freelance writer and have had many articles published in different periodicals). Still, opinions are like feet...most people have at least two and some of them can sometimes stink a little. So if some eHow editor decided that piece was poorly written, so be it. Not a big deal there really, even if I don't agree with them. How to Spot An Albino Squirrel (yes, there are such creatures..I've seen them). Their reason for this article being deleted was "legacy rejection." If anyone knows what that means, please let me know. How To Avoid Becoming A Victim of Check Washing (a big scam in the U.S. society...lots of people still use checks today, believe it or not). The reason for deleting this article? "Other." That's it, just "other." How To Get A $49.99 Pair Of Sneakers For Around $10. The eHow "editors" (and I use that term loosely now) decided this was spam. Okay, maybe I can see this one, sort of, if you decide I'm trying to promote a product of some type, although there are a lot of similar articles still on eHow (not with this subject, but the same style). This one was about how I bought the shoe warranty at Sports Authority, how one clerk tried to wiggle out of honoring the warranty when the soles split after a few months on my $50 pair of shoes, and how I managed to get them to finally honor the warranty, thereby outlining ways that people who bought this shoe warranty could get the terms honored. Still, okay, even though I don't work for Sports Authority and am not affiliated with them in any way, shape or form, and was mainly saying the warranty is there, lots of people don't know it's offered, and if they buy the warranty here is how they can make sure the terms are met if there are problems...okay, maybe this could be considered spam I guess. On the other hand, I also did articles on how to sell on eBay, how to do research on eBay, how to keep from getting scammed on eBay, how to get the best deals on eBay, and, even though I only mentioned eBay, none of those were considered Spam. Same thing with Craig's List. I did a piece on how to sell succesfully on Craig's List, no other company was mentioned...but this one they didn't consider spam and left it alone. How To Read A Person's Body Language...reason for deletion here was "blog/opinion," although I included research from reputable professional sources who have studied body language and what it means so it clearly wasn't just my own opinion here (It wasn't hard to include professional quotes, since I'd already had this article published several times before in print publications and had interviewed professionals then for the piece. I kept the rights to the piece and, by the way, when you publish on eHow, you, as author, also still own the rights to any of your work. You are simply giving them a license to distribute the work you post to their web site on the Internet. However, you, as the author, still own the rights and can publish this work elsewhere..although you do need to tell the other publications that this work was posted first on eHow.) How To Get The Best Cell Phone Plan...reason for deletion here was "common sense." So, if you write for eHow, they can use the following criteria (the ones I personally know about anyway) to delete any of your articles now: poorly written, spam (which, loosely translated, can cover a lot of articles) legacy rejection (whatever that means), other (which can cover pretty much anything they choose to delete...someone please tell me how "other" is a satisfactory explanation), blog/opinion (which can cover just about anything, if they decide it's the writer's opinion...I don't know what the blog part means), and common sense (so you if write something that they decide is just common sense, even though others may not already know about it, that is also cause for removal of your article). As you might have guessed, I am no longer a fan of eHow. I was happy with them in the beginning, but later I didn't understand the reason for several of my articles being deleted in their first round of "cleaning up their site" (but that turned out to be okay because I sold two of the articles they removed to print publications later on for a lot more money than eHow ever paid...I hadn't even thought about marketing those articles, had forgotten about them actually, until eHow deleted them for no good reason that I could fathom). Now, these latest "explanations for removal of articles" are, for the most part, at least to me, ridiculous. I mean when you can use "other" as an explanation to the author as to why a piece was deleted, isn't that giving the so called eHow editors the power to just do anything they like with no real reason provided? (And if you read some of the eHow editors' pieces, some are good but some of them are so poorly written it's rather pathetic.) Please note, though, if you like eHow and are sticking with them, that's totally your decision. I'm not trying to get anyone to stop using eHow. I'm just telling you what has happened to me with this site. As for me, I've deleted all of my eHow articles myself and have sent yet a third request that they close my eHow account (in their FAQ's they tell you how to close an account, yet, to date, they've never honored my request to close my account...they just seem to ingore this). I personally deleted all of my eHow articles that were still on the site because I don't want this site making another dime off any of my work. I can't say they didn't pay regularly and monthly, they did. To me, though, dealing with people who don't seem, at least to me, to be competent or professional editors, simply isn't worth the hassle. Perhaps this is yet another sign I need to get back into the mainstream marketing of writing and forget these types of writing web sites. There's my rant for the day against eHow. I don't think I would be as upset if they had listed some legitimate reasons for article removal. I can handle "poorly written" (everything I write isn't always golden after all) or "spam" (although I still don't think my article was spam, but I guess a loose translation of spam could cover that), but when you can offer explanations like "other" or "blog/opinion" that could pretty much cover just about anything they decide they want to remove, despite an author's hard work, well, my guess then is the site is removing articles that aren't making them as much money as they would like and they're trumping up reasons to remove those pieces. I wouldn't even mind if they said that, but all this "pretend integrity" of "cleaning up their site" to "make it a better site" strikes me as rather hypocritical. This isn't a web site I personally want to deal with any longer. Hey, sorry to get so long-winded here, but thanks for listening.