Understanding eHow’s Article Rejection Procedure

eHow has specific article requirements that must be followed otherwise articles can be deleted. Articles should be informative, require steps to implement procedures, content is not plagiarized, no advertisements, not offensive, and not illegal. Instructions from eHow regarding article standards were provided through an e-mail response from eHow.

eHow stats that “[a]rticles [must] provide instructional information and actionable steps for a reader to follow. Our site focuses on providing instructions on how to do something. We are not a site that permits blogging, opinion pieces, personal observations, stories, ads or poetry”. Contrast this with another article provider: “In ENGLISH & content that you created + have copyrights to (no PLR!). Educational / Information / How-to / Instructional in its subject (No News!). Contains no advertising, referral or affiliate links and is non promotional in its nature” (Bukisa, 2009). Notice that this article provider is more flexible. Content can be educational, informative and in ‘how-to’ format.

eHow states that “[a]rticles must explain how to do things in some detail. Articles with vague, incomplete or unclear instructions will be removed. And of course, information in the article must be factually correct.” Clear and factual writing is a must.

eHow states that “[a]rticles can't include material that is plagiarized from any other person and/or source. Articles published on other sites must be owned by you. ? Please make sure the byline on other sites matches the byline on your eHow account. If the name of the author is not visible, we will have to assume it might be plagiarized. We reserve the right to permanently bar from eHow anyone who submits plagiarized content to us”. If you quote directly from other sources or use graphic content from other Web sites, attribute the source. If you paraphrase content from other source, attribute the source. Use the last name of the author, year of publication if available, and the Web site address (without h t t p : / / ).

eHow states that “[a]rticles that are advertisements, or read like advertisements, are considered SPAM and will be removed.” Additionally, eHow prohibits unauthorized access, misrepresentation, reverse engineering code, or the transmission of malware (Terms and Conditions of Use – 8. Prohibited Conduct, http://www.ehow.com/terms_use.aspx).

eHow states that “[a]rticles must not contain offensive and/or obscene material, including written words, photos and videos. And articles may not contain potentially dangerous and/or illegal instructions”. This includes ‘misleading, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, … defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive to another person's privacy or protected data’ and ‘hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable’ content is prohibited along with ‘infringing upon a third party's intellectual property rights, including any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, right of publicity, or other proprietary rights of any part’ and including ‘unauthorized advertising’ (Terms and Conditions of Use – 7. Prohibited Content, http://www.ehow.com/terms_use.aspx).

November 2009 update. eHow changed their procedures. Members are now motified by e-mail indicating which articles have been rejected. Older rejected articles are identified as legacy articles. Additionally, when each new article is submitted it must be reviewed and then approved before it is 'Published'.