wikiHow:EHow

We frequently get asked if wikiHow and eHow are connected in any way. The short answer is no: wikiHow and eHow are not affiliated.

Edit History

At one point, eHow owned wikiHow, but that was before wikiHow was spun off as a totally independent website on May 1, 2006. Read the details in the full history of wikiHow or the history of eHow. Since May 2006, there has been no shared ownership or other affiliations between the two websites.

Edit Differences Between eHow and wikiHow

While on the surface both sites appear somewhat similar, there are some large differences of philosophy between the two websites.

• wikiHow is under a Creative Commons license and uses open source software. Thus everything on wikiHow is "owned by everyone". When you contribute to eHow, only DemandMedia Inc., the corporation that owns eHow, has rights to the work.
• The wikiHow community has a large say in the governance of the whole site here. In contrast the eHow site is run by DemandMedia Inc., a large corporation, not a community of volunteer editors.
• wikiHow editors have the right to fork, if wikiHow's steward fails to focus on our shared mission. eHow editors only have the right to stop contributing to eHow, the "right to leave". Their content and software are locked up by the corporation.
• wikiHow aims to cover every topic in every language. eHow is only in English and is more tilted towards commercial, advertiser friendly topics than wikiHow.
• wikiHow volunteers are "paid" only in love, admiration, and the pride of contributing to something larger than themselves. eHow has a program to pay its best writers on the most lucrative topics. While this seems appealing, it doesn't lend itself well to a healthy, non-competitive, supportive community that makes contribution fun.
• wikiHow is built to share. wikiHow's open content has been shared by many organizations such as the One Laptop Per Child organization, UNICEF, MIT, and other great causes. eHow content is shared only with the explicit permission of the corporation.
• wikiHow is a wiki and is open to editing by anyone. eHow is not open to editing.
• wikiHow is for people of any age, provided that people under 13 follow the guidelines in wikiHow:COPPA. eHow requires that you are at least 18 years of age.

Edit Other Site Comparisons

Number of Articles

eHow has over 1 million articles and 170,000 videos offering step-by-step instructions, while the English wikiHow currently has 137,617. This is in spite of the fact that wikiHow's Deletion Policy is much more stringent. For example, eHow allows duplicate articles, whereas wikiHow deletes them. Duplicate articles that are kept can add up.