Is It Okay To Subcontract Articles for eHow? No.

There has been much discussion on eHow as to whether members can hire others to write articles for them. For a time eHow waffled on this. But now Julie has just posted a definitive statement:

In order to publish on eHow, you must attest that you are the original author (not simply the copyright owner) of the piece of content you are publishing. Simply put, you sat down, formed your thoughts into words/sentences and completed the entire article on your own. For those of you that have published material on eHow may remember that you must check a box next to the statement asserting that you are the author of the content before you are able to submit your article for publication. If your article is flagged for plagiarism and you are not the original author of the work, your article will be removed.

In regards to my earlier post, I was just pointing out the larger implications of not posting your own work. eHow isn't just a place to post an article to earn money. eHow is a Community of people who come together and learn from one another. If you are not the original author of your work and have no experience or have not done the research on how to do what you're writing about, how will you exchange valuable/quality information with one another?

Thanks,

Julie

This is the only way eHow can handle this, IMHO. So far, we've had several people get in trouble for plagiarism when they purchased articles from unethical sellers. Plus it is unfair to other writers, who do their own work, for a few to subcontract massive amounts of work and use it to squat on all the titles and otherwise bend rules.

I don't blame those who wanted to build themselves a strong business this way, but those people need to use this leverage on their own sites, and not use it to dominate someone else's site.