e-How yanked seven of my articles today, and gave very obscure reasons. I actually anticipated it, because a friend called me yesterday, and said that she had some of her articles pulled. I have more articles than she does, and so expected more to be pulled, and it happened today. e-how wrote and said they were pulling 5, but 7 had disappeared.
I don't mind being edited, it was the manner that is offensive. I've written for the Leader-Herald, our local newspaper, and you expect the editor to ummmm...edit. e-How didn't edit, they sliced and diced. They sent a notice to everyone that said they were sorting through articles and removing plagiarized material, cloned material, articles that promoted click fraud, and spam.
Again, I don't have any problem with any of those, and knew to a certainty that none of my articles fit into any of those categories, but they also included a vague possibility of removing other articles that didn't fit what they wanted for other reasons, which is where all the bloodshed occurred.
I wrote my letter of complaint that will most certainly be ignored, or answered again by the auto bot that spits out those automatic replies to remind me that I'm so insignificant to e-How that I don't rate a real response from a real person. I like what I said, though, and it was cathartic to write it.
I compared their behavior to that of a bad boss, teacher or parent, who punished without letting the child know what his or her infraction was. It would be like handing my children a written list of all of the house rules, and then explaining to them that they were being punished, and that THEY needed to read over the list of rules and figure out for themselves how they had violated the rules. If it is so simple and easy to understand for the e-How writers who are gathering to complain loudly, or quit e-How altogether, how come the powers that be seem so oblivious to the obvious?!
I noticed my Christian-based articles were pulled too...I haven't been active on eHow for a while, but I log in once in a while to check my passive income, and I logged in today and noticed the ones that ministered to people were gone! I got a ton of positive feedback on those and lots of hits! Seems like they're just shooting themselves in the foot.
ReplyDeleteI wondered if they were just cutting payroll...I think they probably lost a lot of great people!
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