Monday, December 31, 2018

Metal Studs for Dummy Builders

blocking in steel-stud wall for heavy item
blocking in steel-stud wall
A recurring theme here at the Freelance Files is all the fresh-faced young journalism grads who have been absolutely convinced that they can reword any content about any topic for any website and Get. It. All. Right. Yeah, sure: if you believe them, we have this pretty bridge in New York City that we've been itching to sell... If you weren't already convinced that at least some of those self-appointed expert freelancers are full of hooey, all you need to do is take a look at the Hunker.com post "How to Fasten Wood to Metal Studs," courtesy of one Alexander Callos.

Sunday, December 30, 2018

Topography Types for Dummies

different topgraphy
Variations in topography
When it comes to wide-ranging dumbassery and major contributions to the stupidification of the internet, you simply cannot beat the fine folks from the websites formerly known as eHow.com. Ask one of their contributors an open-ended question, and heaven only knows what sort of bullshit answer you're going to receive in return. Want an example? Well, you need look no further than the post "Kinds of Land Topography" at Sciencing.com, a Reuben James post moved from eHow.com a couple of years ago.

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Changing Circular Saw Blades for Dummies

Circular Saw Blade
Note 1) arrows for direction of rotation and 2) nut on arbor
takes open-end wrench, not Allen wrench
It used to be that, every few days, an Antisocial Network intern would go through several dozen older posts on the blog to check for dead links. Not long ago, the intern assigned to that task noticed that the referenced post was still in place, but the author's name was different. She'd come across the work of Leaf Group's cleanup team, a small group assigned to "tighten up" the old eHow.com posts. So far, we've only spotted their work at Sciencing.com and Hunker.com, but we presume they'll spread out to other niches eventually. Today's DotD is Steffani Cameron, who was assigned to explain "How to Change the Blade on a Circular Saw" at Hunker.com.

Friday, December 28, 2018

Garbage Disposal Repair for DIY Dummies

InSinkerator mounting ring
Ashton forgot this step...
We always find it interesting to consider just how disconnected from reality the freelancers at eHow.com were. It's remarkably easy to tell which contributors (as the site called its freelancers) had no idea why someone might ask the questions they "answered" for a flat stipend. Take, for instance, the self-described "professsional journalist" Ashton Daigle, who wandered "out of his lane" to (attempt to) explain "How to take Apart an InSinkErator" for Hunker.com.

Thursday, December 27, 2018

Carport Conversions for Dummies

carport conversion framing
carport conversion framing
If you spend as much time wandering the back roads of the internet as the Antisocial Network researchers do, you know that there are some pretty darned cockamamie ideas floating around. We're not even talking about politics, gluten, vaccines, "healthy lifestyle," or any of the other topics that infest the web. Today, we're talking about the notion of converting your carport into living space; specifically of converting it into a sunroom. While the idea may be pretty strange, that pales alongside the treatment Tracie Harris gave it in the eHow.com article, "How to Convert a Carport Into a Sunroom."

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

Meandering Streams for Dummy Geography Students

Meander cutoff and oxbow lake
One of our staffers at the Antisocial Network had a Christmas present for all her coworkers: a new content farm website to mine for freelanced crapola. While checking on an old article about oxbow lakes, she ran across similar dumbassery someplace no one at ANHQ had ever pinged before: ThoughtCo.com. Let's take a look at the travesty "award-winning freelancer" and self-described geographer Matt Rosenberg visited on the same topic in "Oxbow Lakes." The post was originally at About.com before the site changed its name to Dotdash and created niches...

Tuesday, December 25, 2018

The Scientific Method for Dummies

independent dependent variable
There's a... let's call it a "syndrome" that our staffers here at the Antisocial Network see on a regular basis. All you'd have to do is scroll through our blog listing searching on the tag "scientific illiteracy liberal arts" to see examples: it's people who went through college studiously avoiding science courses suddenly convinced that they know enough about science to write about it. Yeah, sure; and the latest proof is a Kimberley McGee post at Sciencing.com; the one titled, "Why Should We Make Multiple Trials of an Experiment?"

Monday, December 24, 2018

Escape Velocity for Dummies

escape velocity image
Calculating escape velocity
It's been almost six months since we last featured one of our most prolific DotDs, and a couple of months since we dipped our collective toe in the murky waters of HubPages.com and its special little niches¹. Mostly it's because searching the site tends to be a pain in the rear, not to mention that the place no longer pays jack so hubbies don't update their content and it tends to disappear... but we do make the occasional exception. Here without further ado, we give you 28-time winner Joan Whetzel and her take on "Escape Velocity and the Solar System."

Sunday, December 23, 2018

Installing Fence Panels for Dummies

stepped fence panels
Stepped fence panels
When the time comes to build a fence around your property, whether it's to keep dogs and kids inside or keep nosy neighbors outside, you have to make a choice: do you build the fence picket by picket, or do you buy those hand-dandy pre-assembled fence panels from your local big-box store? Our in-house landscaper types have done both. If the truth be told, they'd rather build everything from scratch because it give you a lot more flexibility. If, however, you decide to go with panels, we strongly advise you to look for help somewhere other than Mike Andrew and his HomeSteady.com post, "How to Mount Wood Fence Panels Between Posts."

Saturday, December 22, 2018

Shimano Acera Derailleurs for the Dummy Cyclist

acera rear derailleur
Acera rear derailleur
It's pretty much our watchword here at the Antisocial Network that you don't ask people to help you solve problems they don't understand, and that if they volunteer advice you should verify with someone you trust. Today's DotD is one such case. According to her bio, we can (probably) trust Lisa Schwalbe with horticultural questions, but in the case of her SportsRec.com post "How to Adjust a Shimao Acera," you may well need some more... informed advice.

Friday, December 21, 2018

Ovals for Dummies

ellipse semiminor semimajor axes
Ellipse semimajor (A) and semiminor (B) axes
We haven't done the math, so to speak, but off the top of our collective head the geometric figure our DotDs have the most problems with is something called an "oval." At least twice, we've featured freelancers who have tried to tell readers how to calculate something about an "oval" and once we had some putz who tried to describe how to draw one. Bummer, eh? Especially, given that an oval – unlike an ellipse – has no fixed definition. That didn't stop Leaf Group rewrite specialist Claire Gillespie, though, when she took on "How to Calculate the Circumference of an Oval."

Thursday, December 20, 2018

Fossiliferous Rocks for Dummies

fossil in Burgess Shale
Fossil in Burgess Shale
We regularly subject the staff geologist to some rather irksome copy from the keyboards of freelancers, especially those who plied their trade at eHow. Some, in fact, still ply their trade there, but that's another problem. Whatever. Whether it's trying to say that oil and natural gas form in pockets, pools, or layers; or misinforming readers that the tectonic plates float on liquid magma; he's seen just about everything. Well, he thought he had before he came upon Cathryn Whitehead and her Sciencing.com post, "The Rock Most Likely to Contain Fossils."

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

Metric Prefixes for Dummies

Big Data
Metric prefixes applied to big data
We here at the Antisocial Network firmly believe that there is no such thing as useless information, at least once you get beyond being able to name every Kardashian. Whatever the case, we feel that when someone asks for the definition of a word, it's to their benefit to understand a) how it came into the language and b) what might be some related words. That's especially true if, like R. Kayne at WiseGEEK.com, you find it necessary to use 360 or so words to try to answer the question, "What Is a Petabyte?"

Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Spin Bike RPMs for Dummies

stationary bike computer
Stationary bike computer
You have to love it when people can find more than one way to show just how unqualified they are to write their little freelance articles (and collect their eHow.com stipends). We were checking an older post for dead links not long ago, and what to our wondering eyes should appear but a new and equally stupid post on a similar topic. The old one was something about bicycle tire sizes, and the new one seemed tangentially related... it's eHowian C. Taylor and his SportsRec.com post, "How to Convert RPMs to MPH on a Stationary Bike."

Monday, December 17, 2018

Framing Your Art for Dummies

matting and framing your artwork
matting and framing artwork
The local newspaper (remember those?) has a daily column composed of short gripes and other comments from the readership; a section called "Let it Out." Not long ago, someone complained about employers requiring a college education, saying that there are "plenty of talented people who haven't gone to college." That's certainly true, although perhaps those employers are looking for something other than "talent." Whatever, today's DotD nominee has lots of college education, but Adam Cloe Ph.D./M.D. still lacked the "talent" to tell people, "How to Frame Art Yourself"¹ at OurPastimes.com.

Sunday, December 16, 2018

Electrical Ground for Dummies

ground rod specifications
Ground rod specifications
In case you haven't noticed it, we assign tags to each of our posts; key words and phrases like "dumbass of the day" and "HomeSteady incompetent writer." One tag we don't use lightly is the phrase, "dangerous stupidity": it's reserved for nominees whose advice or instructions are tantamount to nomination for a Darwin Award. Today's nominee, returning winner Marissa Wilson, had a short and inglorious career at eHow. We have yet to find anything she wrote that doesn't qualify her for an award, but – thankfully – today's the first time her award is tagged with dangerous stupidity. Take a look at her thoughts on "How to Install Ground Wiring"¹ at HomeSteady.com.

Saturday, December 15, 2018

A Dummy's Guide to the World's Worst Deck Plans

A cheap deck?
There are lots of hard-earned lessons our staffers are more than happy to share with readers, but today they would like to concentrate on two of them. The first is something you should already have learned for yourself: "You get what you pay for." The second? Well, that's pretty much why we identify some moronic freelancer every day to be our daily dumbass: "You can't trust a freelancer writing at a content farm." With that said, then, let's see what Carole Ellis (aka Carole Vansickle) has to say in the Sapling.com post, "How to Build a Cheap Deck."

Friday, December 14, 2018

Sandstone for the Dummy Geology Student

The Antisocial Network's staff geologist looked at the title of today's DotD nominee and heaved a mighty sigh. His next move was to reach onto his bookshelf and pull out a copy of what is arguably one of the most important sedimentology books of the 20th Century, Pettijohn and Potter's Sand and Sandstone. He then laid his head on the tome and wept... as would any sedimentologist who'd been forced to read the eHow article "Characteristics of Sandstone," a bunch of nonsense cobbled together by John London.

Thursday, December 13, 2018

Solid Geometry for Dummy Eighth Graders

three cubed is twenty-seven
If there's anything that irks our research staffers more than a self-proclaimed "expert" who proves to be ignorant, we aren't really sure what that might be. While we realize that at least some of the stupidity expressed in eHow.com content (native or reassigned to a niche site) is the fault of ignorant J-school grads working as "content editors," we also know that here was a protocol for correcting any errors they introduced. We'd like to think that as a "former math tutor," Marie Mulrooney would have known that something  was seriously wrong with her "How to Calculate Cubic Space," now found at Sciencing.com.

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Pumice and Scoria for Dummies

scoria vs. pumice
Pumice (left) and scoria (right)
If you weren't aware of it already, you may have noticed that we regularly check all of our posts to avoid the specter of dead links. Although certain other sites aren't particularly squeamish about sending people to "404" messages, we'd rather that people be able to find the originals of the posts we lampoon. Sometimes the hapless intern assigned to perform these checks learns that the host site has deleted the content or redirected the links (see the bold red links scattered through the lists sorted by name), but the best is when we find that it's been  rewritten. That's especially delicious when the rewrite job is no better than the original; like Blake Flournoy and their Sciencing.com attempt to tell us, "What Is the Difference Between Pumice and Scoria?"

Tuesday, December 11, 2018

Self-Employment Expenses for Dummy Giggers

IRS Schedule SE instructions
IRS Schedule SE instructions
Serendipity strikes without warning, you know? Well, at least it struck our researcher without warning this time: she was doing some background work on a post at Leaf Group's Sapling.com¹ and found that the author of that post had cited some place called "Made Man" as a reference... on a tax question. Ten seconds' effort made it pretty clear that the freelancer in question had cited a different freelancer at a different content farm. So, without further ado, we give you Francois DuBois of MadeMan.com and his attempt to educate people on "How to Claim Expenses When Self-Employed."² Oh, boy, another content farm...

Monday, December 10, 2018

Dating Fossils for the Dummy Geology Student

Determine relative age of fossil
We aren't quite sure how the site that calls itself HowStuffWorks.com works, but our staffers suspect that the site may have started out as an eHow-style content farm that subsequently tried to recast itself as an authority on everything (not unlike WiseGEEK.com). You can (usually) tell at which stage in the site's evolution a post was written: if there's a byline, it's meant to be authoritative; if written by a "contributor," it's from the eHow-style era. Unfortunately, some of the long and involved posts with bylines are... less than authoritative. Here's one of them, Tracy V. Wilson and her take on "How Do Scientists Determine the Age of Dinosaur Bones?"

Sunday, December 9, 2018

Petroleum Reservoirs for Utter Dummies

petroleum reservoir, trap, seal
petroleum reservoir, trap, and seal
Several of the staffers here at the Antisocial Network have their "go-to topics" for days when the eternal search for internet bogosity is going a little too slowly. One of them spent a couple of decades working in the "oil patch," and he says that the odds that a freelancer will "get it right" about the oil industry run about 15:1 against. He's already proven that point more than 30 times. Well, he's here again to present today's DotD to Esther Ejim of WiseGEEK.com for her attempt to explain, "What Is a Petroleum Reservoir?" (now at AllThingsNature.com).

Saturday, December 8, 2018

Building a Table the Dummies Way

table top fasteners
Some fastening techniques to allow movement in tabletops
It's only been a few days since we spent the entire week lambasting OurPastimes.com (a Leaf Group site that niches old eHow.com content) and its "contributors" for some of the more ridiculous rubbish they scribbled down. Needless to say, the research team turned up far more than just seven posts at the site. That's why we're featuring yet another post from the site today, three-time DotD Jonra Springs and his take on "How to Attach a Table Top to the Base Frame & Legs."

Friday, December 7, 2018

Trombones for the Dummy Musician

trombone parts
Parts of a trombone
Around these parts we're pretty convinced that when someone asks you about the "parts of" something, you would be wise to concentrate your efforts on the most important parts. Say, if someone were to ask you about the parts of a computer, you should probably concentrate on the processor and the input/output system before moving on the power cord and the USB ports. Doing it otherwise suggests that you don't know what your talking about... sort of like Lee Johnson trying to tell WiseGEEK.com readers, "What Are the Different Parts of a Trombone?"

Thursday, December 6, 2018

Baseball Pins for Dummy Collectors

1980 Olympic Pin
1980 Winter Olympics pin
Our research team members come up with really weirdest crap at times, but perhaps the best of the best (or is it worst of the worst?) are the content-farm posts freelancing non-English speakers have cobbled together in a desperate attempt to pick up a few US dollars. We've already featured one of them, an EzineArticles.com contributor using the pseudonym Mary Riverstone (perhaps really someone named Greeshma Justin) – and she's back for her third appearance with "Baseball Trading Pins - The Color of Enthusiasm and Spirit!"

Wednesday, December 5, 2018

Linear Equations for Algebra Dummies

One of our staff's pet peeves – they have a whole kennel full of them – is content-farm freelancers who don't quite understand the questions they're asked to address. A deficiency often becomes clear when they misuse technical terminology, which is why we're here today. The peeve is even more robust than usual, however, because of the rewrite Sciencing.com's Kevin Beck performed on "How to Graph Linear Equations With Two Variables."

Tuesday, December 4, 2018

Bogus Saw Reviews for Dummy Carpenters

Bosch worksite table saw
Some, although unfortunately not all, of our DotD candidate posts include what the author seems to think are references to back up their statements. Whenever possible, we follow these references to their source to determine whether the original is full of crap or the freelancer in question simply can't reword useful information and make sense. Every once in a while, though... and today's one of those "once in a while" occasions. So let's meet freelancer James K. Blake and his EzineArticles.com post, "A Cut Above: The Bosch 4100 Worksite Table Saw With Gravity Rise Stand."

Monday, December 3, 2018

Bed Rails for Dummies

hollywood frame
hollywood frame
Our research team members spend quite a bit of time wandering about the 'net looking for easily-recognized bogosity. They tell us that one of easiest ways to find a bogus answer in the family of eHow.com niche sites is to look for a stupid question. It's a pretty safe bet that one of the greedier eHow.com contributors snapped it up and compiled a bogus answer. After all, DMS¹ never let you say, "You can't!" Instead, you were required to write 300 words or so in three or more steps. That's just what Erin Ringwald did for Homesteady.com in "How to Convert Full Size Bed Rails to Queen Size"; as opposed to saying, "That's a stupid question!"

Sunday, December 2, 2018

Decline Curves for the Dummy Petroleum Engineer

decline curve models
Decline curve models
OurPastimes week is over, so it's time – past time (ba-dump-bump) – to move on to other collections of freelancers who excel mainly at stupidifying the internet. We haven't yet delved particularly deeply into the bunch at WiseGEEK.com (eighteen freelancers collecting twenty-five awards as of this writing), but it's pretty obvious that a lot of them are every bit as unqualified to write about their topics as the OurPastimes crowd. Plus, they don't have to publish their "references"! Which is probably why today's DotD, Toni Henthorn, got into trouble writing "What Is a Decline Curve?"

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Garnet for the Dummy Miner (OurPastimes Week 7)

pyrope garnet
Pyrope garnet crystal
Among the many cute little signs that decorate the walls of Antisocial Network world headquarters is one that baldly states, "Those of you who think you know everything are annoying to those of us who do." No one here will ever claim to know everything, but all of us know more about some things than the members of the eHow contributor staff whose factual butchery we expose on any given day. Take today's example: our staff geologist just groaned when he saw what English major J. Lang Wood had to say about "How Is Garnet Mined & Processed?" at Our Pastimes.com.

Friday, November 30, 2018

A Train Table for the Dummy Woodworker

train table
train coffee table
We were looking through the pile of candidates for our week of OurPastimes.com dummies, and the image on one of the posts caught the eye of a staffer whose significant other likes to play with trains. The post, a rather lengthy one (for eHow.com, anyway), is titled "How to Make a Train Coffee Table." We recognized writer Jane Smith as one of our former winners, so we took a closer look at what she'd written... Boy, was that a mess...

Thursday, November 29, 2018

Rock Tumbler Grit for Dummies

rock tumbling machine
rock tumbling machine
Once upon a time there was a journalism major who wrote for her college newspaper. In her free time, she picked up a few bucks writing for this cool website that paid her to publish how-to articles. The coolest thing was that even if she didn't know "how to," no one there knew, either; so she'd still get paid even for utter bull. That, we believe, is how Megan Shoop and her post "How to Make Your Own Rock Polishing Grit" made it onto the internet at eHow.com and, eventually, to OurPastimes.com.

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

Corner Cabinets for Dummy Carpenters

curio corner cabinet plans
Sample curio corner cabinet plans
We aren't really sure why anyone would turn to the likes of eHow.com to get plans for furniture for the home, but the people who ran the site were still more than happy to publish bogus claptrap. After all, any hit earns advertising revenue, no matter how worthless the information on the page, right? With that in mind, check out the OurPastimes.com post (by an anonymous contributor) that supposedly has information on "How to Build a Corner Curio Cabinet."¹

Tuesday, November 27, 2018

Socket Wrench Use for the Dummy Mechanic

round-head ratchet
What lever, Cameron?
We freely admit that our staffers find some of the questions "answered" by the contributors at eHow.com (and the niches to which Leaf Group has moved that content) are just plain stupid. What's worse, however, is that at least some of the philosophy and journalism majors DMS¹ paid to write their content were just as clueless as the people who asked the question. take, for instance, Cameron Easey, who tried to answer the question, "How to Loosen a Nut with a Socket Wrench." You can find it at niche site OurPastimes.com.

Monday, November 26, 2018

Pigeonhole Shelves for Dummy Woodworkers

pigeon-hole unit
pigeon-hole shelf unit
If you have a philosophical question about storage, we guess asking a freelancing ex-philosophy major for help might get you the answer you want. On the other hand, we aren't quite certain that a philosophy grad would be able to give you the best instructions for "How to Make Pigeon Hole Shelving." We think we'd rather have had someone who knows what he's talking about write the OurPastimes.com post – as opposed to Jose Leiva... What's really strange is that Jose cited a discussion of the shelf unit to the right as his "source." Yeah, sure...

Sunday, November 25, 2018

Firing a Mortar for Dummies (OurPastimes Week 1)

mortar fire
mortar fire
HowStuffWorks week was so much fun that the staff voted to feature another website for a week. In reality, what brought that on was noticing just how doofus some of the posts at Leaf Group's OurPastimes.com niche are, not to mention how easy it is to follow a trail of links from one candidate to another. We already had a pile of candidates in the files, though, so we'll start with one from returning DotD Brittany Prock: her take on "How to Aim a Mortar,"

Saturday, November 24, 2018

Your Very Own Workbench for Dummy Woodworkers

DIY workbench
If you haven't seen the row of clickbait photos spread across the bottom of about 70% of the web pages you access in a day, you must not be paying attention. We mean the ones that advertise crap like, "She had no idea why they were staring," or "You won't believe what [name of celebrity] looks like now!" Of course, if you click on one, you'll find an endless string of stock photos copiously wallpapered with popups and other ads. In other words, bait and switch. You wanted to see what Markie Post or Donny Osmond looks like today, but what you got was 63 unrelated photos! Well, freelancers bait and switch, too, especially when they're basically ignorant of their topic; like HowStuffWorks.com contributor Elizabeth Abbess and her post, "How to Make a Workbench."

Friday, November 23, 2018

Curved Surfaces for Dummies

curved plane
neither sphere nor cylinder, but still a curved surface
A lot of things trip our staffers' bogosity detectors while they're looking for DotD nominees. One of them is overly-specific writing for a rather general question. We see that a lot in the family of niche sites where Leaf Group stashed old eHow.com posts. That's precisely what we found for today's awardee, a freelancer who calls herself Stephanie Ellen (and sometimes S. Deviant). Her text for today is from Sciencing.com; a little something the leafies call "How to Calculate the Area of a Curved Surface."

Thursday, November 22, 2018

Foundation Vents for Dummies

foundation vent
You might be surprised (we're not...) by how often content-farm freelancers manage to botch DIY instructions because, to be perfectly frank, they have no earthly idea what they're talking about. Take, for instance, the half-baked job multiple DotD winner Lacy Enderson performed when attempting to tell people, "How to Install a Foundation Vent" at the mother site, eHow.com.

Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Breaking Down Oil for Dummy Environmentalists

surfactants and oil
surfactants and oil
Every time you reach for the bottle (or box) of laundry detergent, you're hoping that the chemicals in the mixture will break down natural oils. You don't have to have spilled motor oil (or vegetable oil) on your shirt; your skin oils are just as capable of generating a stain and holding onto a little grime. The chemists who concocted your detergent already know "What Chemicals Break Down Oil?" If anyone doesn't, though, they're not going to get much help from the Sciencing.com post by Mark Fitzpatrick.

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

Slope-Intercept for Dummy Algebra Students

graph of y = 2x - 7
graph of y = 2x - 7
It's time, we guess, to harp on the notion of "internet stupidification" again. It's bad enough that the internet is full of bullshit claims and fake statements, but when one of the more egregious offenders among websites actually removes valid information and replaces it with bogosity, we end up with the faint taste of barf in our collective mouth. That, however, is precisely what Leaf Group did with the Sciencing.com post "How to Find B in Y=MX + B [sic]"¹; rewritten by one Kevin Beck.

Monday, November 19, 2018

Racks for Dummy Bicycle Owners

trunk mount bike rack
Trunk-mounted bike rack
All the research staffers tell us that you really have to wonder some times, "Just what was this person thinking?" Not only do they come across non-answers and wrong answers in their research of the how-to content farms, they also find general answers to specific questions and specific answers to general questions. Why anyone would think that the topic, "How to Tie Down Bikes on a Bike Carrier" means to go to the directions for a specific model of bike rack from a specific brand is a mystery to everyone here... but the alleged answer Keith Dooley provided for SportsRec.com is precisely that.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

Ellipse Area for the Dummy Geometry Student

ellipse area
Area of ellipse calculation inputs
It's pretty common for our staffers to refer to what we call the "stupidification of the internet," usually at the hands of an un- or at least under-educated freelancer. The proliferation of fake news and moronic memes notwithstanding, we'd like to think that the dumbassery we point out on these pages helps reduce the bogosity somewhat, but it seems hopeless. It seems hopeless, at least this time, because the mother lode of misinformation seems hellbent on making things worse. Witness freelancer Jon Zamboni and his rewrite of the post, "How to Calculate the Area of an Oval" at Sciencing.com.

Saturday, November 17, 2018

Gas Wells for Dummies (HSW Week 7)

natural gas wellhead
Natural gas wellhead
It stands to reason that some content-farm freelancers are competent, at least in the areas where they have expertise. We have no one on staff who's qualified to argue with an M.D. about drug interactions or with an experienced welder about the difference between TIG and MIG welding. HSW's Jamie Page Deaton seems to be one such competent freelancer when it comes to automotive questions. Her problem today, though, is that she apparently knows little or nothing about "How does natural gas drilling work?" but wrote the article anyway.

Maybe because "gas" was in the title? Who knows...

Friday, November 16, 2018

A Router Table for Woodworking Dummies

shop-built router table
shop-built router table
A couple of times early in the Antisocial Network's crusade to stamp out greedy freelancer stupidity we ran across near-duplicate posts. We assumed that happened because of poor quality control at content farms like Seekyt and Bubblews, which is where we'd found previous duplicates.¹ We didn't expect to find such duplication at a site that prides itself on being a "source of unbiased, reliable, easy-to-understand answers and explanations of how the world actually works" – but there it was at HowStuffWorks.com. A post by an Anonymous "contributor" called "How to Build a Router Table."

Thursday, November 15, 2018

Magma for Dummy Liberal Arts Majors (HSW Week 5)

magma generation in subduction zones
Magma generation in subduction zones
Welcome to HowStuffWorks week, where we call out seven freelancers who seem to have sold their intellectual souls for a handful of royalties... or perhaps a stipend: we aren't sure how HSW pays. Whatever the case, we sent our staffers to the site to look for bogosity and dumbassery, and we found more than enough to fill out a week. Here's today's example, Tracy V. Wilson and her cockamamie attempt to answer the equally cockamamie question, "Will we ever run out of magma?"

Wednesday, November 14, 2018

Router Bits for Dummy Woodworkers (HSW Week 4)

router bit profiles
Router bit profiles
Once again, we've decided to focus on just one page of the five in a HowStuffWorks.com article, mostly because none of the staff wanted to read the entire thing. Well, that, and the 300-some words Elizabeth Abbess plugged into page two of her article, "How to Choose Router Bits: Common Types of Router Bits" were all anyone around these parts needed to read to know that she simply had no idea what she was talking about.

Whatever the case, Abbess (like most HSW bylines, it seems to be a nom de plume) found herself some handy lists of router bit profiles to mine – except that the word "profile" didn't show up Elizabeth's list. Of course, she couldn't just reproduce the list, 'cause that would get her hand slapped for plagiarism. The results, however, of her copy-reword-paste job were rather amusing.

Tuesday, November 13, 2018

Attic Vents for Dummies (HSW Week 3)

roof vent with flashing
roof vent with flashing
It's only the third day into HowStuffWorks week, but the staffers are already complaining about the number of page clicks that site requires for you to read an entire article. They've also noticed that many of the shorter (and more stupidified) articles seem to be credited to "contributors" or "editors" instead of individuals. That being said, it's still pretty easy to come across crud on the website – crud like "How do I install attic vents?"; a topic that Vivien Bullen attempted to address for HowStuffWorks.com.

Monday, November 12, 2018

Clipless Pedals for Dummy Cyclists (HSW Week 2)

cycling shoe and clipless pedal
cycling shoe and clipless pedal
One feature of HowStuffWorks.com that our Antisocial Network staffers have noticed is that articles are broken into chunks a few hundred words long. We figure there are several reasons for this: the pages show up separately in search results and the individual pages generate more ad hits, for instance. We don’t want to our readers to have to wade through four pages of freelance twaddle, though, so we’re fine with handing Brian Boone an award just on the basis of page two of his article, “How Pedaling Technique Works: Clipless Pedaling Techniques.”