Freelancing at Home

In my last post about the eHow UK scam I posed some questions about whether writers would see compensation from the misuse of their articles. My thoughts at the time were, no. eHow and eHow staff are going to try and sweep this under the rug and hope that writers drop and forget the money they lost during the whole eHow UK scam.

My thoughts today were confirmed. In order to hurry along the sweeping under the rug, eHow community manager Rich has been deleting posts that ask about compensation for writers, as well as any posts that mention the possibility of a lawsuit.

One of my own posts fell into the deletion. Since that first deletion I've now had five messages deleted and have received a few 'Bad girl. Go sit in the corner.' messages from Rich that I'm sharing all of on this "eHow UK Scam Censoring" post.

Rich, community manager, claims he is only deleting posts which are attacking to other members, eHow staff or are unnecessary to the conversation. That makes sense. No one wants those types of negative vibes floating around in a thread.

But if that's all he is deleting then why was my post calmly asking about compensation for writers deleted? Most likely because I mentioned the fact that Rich's own words could be used in a lawsuit against eHow. eHow wants to sweep away and ignore any mention of lawsuits; obviously this is a very sore spot and that just confirms my previous belief that there were some legal copyright issues to using US content on the UK site without permission.

My next posts all asked why my posts continued to be deleted until finally I received this private message from Rich, the eHow community manager:

Look Tara, ask the question, but do not bring up the fact that I'm erroneously deleting posts. You've been with us for some time and you know I like you being part of the community, however, I have my reasons, and in my opinion you're creating unnecessary attention. This is my final warning. If you don't agree, then I'm sorry, but it's part of my job to keep order on the forums and if I need to put a penalty I will do so. Thank you for your understanding.



Best,

Rich

It's a shame really that eHow's version of 'crowd control' has raised my hackles so much when I was previously fairly calm about this issue. I was fairly removed to my thoughts that I wasn't going to be compensated for the loss of income and while upset about it, I was not even thinking about going a lawsuit route for myself. This censoring though is going too far! People who were cheated by the eHow UK scam have a right to speak and ask questions - especially in a calm manner - and that right is being denied to them!

"...do not bring up the fact that I'm erroneously deleting posts." - A bonus. Rich knows thath is erroneously deleting things and even calls it fact. No, I doubt that's what he meant to say, but Freudian slip, Freudian slip.