eHow Friends and eHow Comments

It seems like every day someone on eHow sends me a friend request. I'm not really sure how other people handle this- do they ignore all requests? Do they approve all the requests?

I check out at least one of every person's articles that asks to be my eHow friend. What has become apparent is that a lot of the requests come from people that are new. It's hard to figure out how they found me, because very few seem to share many interests with me. I then read their article and comments. It becomes clear that most people simply want to be friends so that you will leave nice comments on their articles. The implication being that they will do the same for you.

I have decided that I don't want to have friends like that. I want coments on my articles to be sincere.

One thing I have noticed is that a lot of people who request to be a friend are actually spammers. Their articles are non-articles. That is, that they are direct self-promotion of their own business or website, or have no content but plenty of affiliate links they hope to make money with- violations of eHow's TOS. They also can't spell or write for shit. I don't know how they can sleep at night- I would be too embarrassed to have my name on such crappy articles. I don't want to be friends with people like that. I wonder what they would think if they know that I immediately reject their friend request, and then flag their articles for removal?

On the other hand, there have been some people who have found me in the forums and sent a friend request, who do share things in common with me, and I am happy to read their articles and comment. Not surprisingly, their articles are well-written.

Speaking of comments- who the heck told people to use a couple of words from the article title, and then say -"great article! 5*s and a recommend!". It is so obvious that every person who does this has not even read the article. Like today, I saw that 11 people had left glowing comments thanking the writer for their article on how to find a tour guide in Bejiing. Except that when I read the article, it was not about that. It was an advertisement for one tour guide, complete with name, phone number and website. Clear TOS violations. And, it was so poorly written by someone who had no command of English or spelling, that it was impossible to read. Yet- 5*s! Recommend! As if giving the piece of crap 5 stars would somehow magically make it readable and earn a million bucks?
Instead of begging for friends, their time would be better spent writing quality articles.