Specialized Information Sites Practicum

There are countless types of specialized information sites. Wikipedia, eHow, instructables.com, etc. are all great sources of information that can be accessed for free by any user. The trend in the specialized information community is for the users to be more lurkers than actually contribute their own input to the site. With Wikipedia being a main exception to this trend, I noticed that when Wikipedia users edited and redact each article it is overseen by a special group of users named administrators. On these other sites of specialized information the main way users are allowed to interact is either in a forum or on a comment section at the end of each article. eHow, the website I chose to focus my practicum on, was a community of lurkers who consume the endless articles of information, usually step-by-step, instead of contributing their own ideas. This mostly comes from the way eHow operates by paying freelance writers small sums to write article for the site which drastically affects how well the articles are written and the amount users participate on the site. It was very difficult to find any article that had one if not more comments by users. There is no way to create an account but the way one can comment is by signing into your Facebook profile to post. From their you can choose to post it to your wall, minifeed, or not post at all. The online eHow community is much larger on Facebook. Articles that are posted on the actually site are uploaded to  the eHow Facebook page where they are flooded with likes and comments by users all over the world. These users interact more and take each other's thoughts and comments into considerations. Even on some articles users give advice on how to improve or do easier the action the article was explaining. It is through this platform that users are free to interact with one another in a much more sensible and noticeable community.