I don’t understand your point… I wrote exactly what you did – eHow got wrecked.
I didn’t know this site personally but practically EVERYONE who gave examples to why panda doesn’t work well mentioned eHow specifically, including Matt Cutts.
I will continue this strategy. Close inspection of the GOOD article-sites will show you what’s the difference between content-farming to added-value sites. No way are google going to allow themselves to damage consensus sites like that again.
If you don’t believe that you might as well give-up on link-building altogether. After all, there might be a “Zebra” update in the future that will eliminate all blogs, an “Iguana” update that will eliminate all forums, a “Kangaroo” update that will eliminate all sites including banners, and so on and so forth.