Oak Tree Root Systems for Dummies

A tree's root system

Although we definitely agree that "a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing," we aren't sure whether we prefer that little bit to no knowledge at all. We have to admit that our opinion of the matter is colored by the vast numbers of clueless freelancers – many with liberal arts degrees – attempting to transmit scientific knowledge through the Leaf Group niche sites¹. The hallmarks of these scientific illiterates are their inability to use scientific terms and their misunderstanding of causality. Oh, enough of that. Here's today's DotD nominee, Lauren Miller, and her prize-winning post, "The Root Systems of Oak Trees" at Hunker.com. Why Leaf stuck it there, we have no idea...

Shingling a Roof Peak for Dummies

roof peak shingles

Our staffers at the Antisocial Network aren't in the habit of asking random strangers for help with do-it-yourself projects. We might ask someone at the local hardware store – assuming that the person in the plumbing section has actually done some work as a plumber instead of as a minimum-wage stock clerk – but freelancing law students? Naaahhh... The reason for that should be obvious, but if you don't get it right off the bat, here's an example: law student and freelance writer Martin Adamovic writing at HomeSteady.com, and her post "How to Shingle a Roof Peak."¹

Pyramids for Dummies

Hexagonal pyramid

If there's a form of freelance dumbassery that the Antisocial Network staffers detest most, it's probably the failure to gently inform someone that he or she has asked a stupid question. The second most might be the tendency of some dumbass freelancers to confuse specific with general. Lucky us: today's DotD nominee, eHow.com contributor Tasos Vossos, checked off both boxes with his Sciencing.com post, "How to Calculate the Volume of a Triangle." Opa, Tasos...

Wall-Mounted Sinks for Dummies

A wall-mounted sink

Around Antisocial Network HQ it's pretty much a tenet of faith that no one should write how-to articles unless they've actually done whatever it is they're writing about. Why? because even a self-described "professional journalist" is going to have problems translating someone else's experience into words. OK, perhaps if the journalist interviews someone and then lets the interviewee edit the copy, but these people who just perform a copy-reword-paste job on someone else's instructions? Give us a break: someone like Elizabeth McGrath, tackling "How to Install a Wall-Mounted Sink" at TheSpruce.com doesn't even know if the directions she's rewording are right in the first place!

Steel Pennies For Dummies

1943-S Steel Penny

Here at the Antisocial Network, we have a simple rule: if someone asks you how to do something stupid, right up front you tell them, "That's stupid!" After that, it's up to you: if you think they've been properly informed, you can go ahead and tell them – but you gotta tell 'em that it's not a good idea (and preferably why). Of course, that presupposes that you, yourself, know it's stupid, a supposition that clearly didn't fit foodie Tucker Cummings when she attempted to branch into numismatics with "How to Clean Steel Pennies" at OurPastimes.com.

The Weight of Water for the Clueless

Workings of a water tower

Of all the offenses against basic knowledge created by wannabe freelancers, perhaps the worst is the scientifically ignorant freelancer who tries to answer a technical question and gets it wrong. Second, we suspect, is the "fact-checker" who fails to catch and correct the error; usually because the fact-checker is equally ignorant. Yes: we're talking about the eHow.com family of contributors and the J-school graduates who pretended to be "content editors." Today's candidate is "professional journalist" W. L. Adkins, and his topic (at Sciencing.com) is "How to Calculate Pounds Per Square Inch in Elevated Water Storage Tanks."¹

Snow Guards for Dummies

Roof with snow guards installed

It seems pretty clear to most people that if you want to know how to make something, you ask someone who knows what that something is and how to make it. Doesn't that make sense? You don't ask the average farmer how to make a balloon catheter; likewise you wouldn't expect a typical phlebotomist to be able to tell you how to make your own featherboard. Which leads us to ask what makes freelancers think they know everything? Clearly they don't: for instance, Homesteady.com's Julia Salgado has no earthly idea "How to Make Your Own Snow Guards"!

Quartz for Utter Dummies

Dig that out with a hand shovel, Becky!

Perhaps because several of our staffers are “earthy” people, we seem to find quite a few shoddy freelance articles that are supposed to transfer knowledge about rocks and minerals. Given that quartz is probably closer to ubiquitous than any other rock-forming mineral, we’d like to think that whoever posted about it would get some of it right. We were wrong, though: take a look at the mess Rebecca Miller made out of “How to Find Quartz Stones” for Ourpastimes.com.

Large Holes for Woodworking Dummies

shop-built hole jig based on a trammel

Several of our staffers here a the Antisocial Network are competent DIYers, the kind of person you'd probably love to have for a friendly, helpful neighbor (as long as you returned their tools!). Their competence with a wide variety of projects makes them pretty good at spotting the bull pumped out by freelancers who would very likely be hopeless as DIYers, freelancers like eHowian Lauren Vork. We might ask Lauren a music question ('cause of her degree), but when it comes to "How to Cut a 6-Inch Hole"?¹ Her HomeSteady.com post is pretty damning...

Corner Sink Cabinets, the Dummies Version

corner sink cabinet

The break-room kitchen at Antisocial Network World HQ just doesn't cut it, so the staffers have been passing around their suggestions for a remodel. Since the room has no windows – it's just a break room, after all – several of the plans call for placing the sink in the corner of the room. The idea reminded one researcher of a HomeSteady.com post she'd flagged a few weeks before, so she passed it on the the nomination team. That's how "How to Make a Corner Kitchen Sink Cabinet"¹ by Judi Light Hopson came to be today's DotD nominee.

Do-It-Yourself Emeralds for Dummies

Lab-grown synthetic emeralds

One of our interns claims to have seen every episode of "Big Bang Theory" several times, and will happily regale you with tales of Sheldon Cooper's childhood science experiments – the time he built his own CAT scanner, for instance, or his attempt to build a personal Takomak nuclear reactor. Apparently, a modern-day Sheldon once wanted to know "How to Make Synthetic Emeralds," and the folks at eHow.com were only too happy to "answer. Want some giggles? Check out what English teacher Audrey Farley told the OQ at Sciencing.com...

Guitar Strings for the Total Dummy

Lori used a picture of nylon strings...

For several years, our staffers had ignored the website WiseGeek.com as a repository for internet dumbassery. Why? perhaps because they, like many, were fooled by the name. It could also be that the level of semi-plagiarism – skillful rewording of authoritative text – at the site was much higher than in the DMS¹ family of websites. There also seem to be far fewer candidate freelancers at WG meaning, perhaps, a bit more rigorous screening of their "qualifications." Nonetheless, there are plenty of posts that meet all our criteria for DotD; we just have to look a little harder. Look, we did, and we caught not-so-wise geek Lori Kilchermann bullshitting us with "How Do I Choose the Best Acoustic Guitar Strings?" Oops...

DIY Home Plumbing for Dummy Homeowners

House plan with plumbing schematic

Sometimes our researchers are lazy – or maybe it's just Friday afternoon and they're busy checking the standing of their fantasy football team before the weekend. Whatever the case, one of the easiest ways to find freelance dumbassery seems to be to look not for the topic but for the writer. That's what happened today: after noticing just how clueless eHowian Marissa Wilson was about finishing plywood and putting up crown molding on cabinets, one of our staffers just tracked her around the 'net for a few minutes. Sure enough, Marissa proved golden, with her HomeSteady.com post "How to Install Plumbing in a House."¹

Building a Home for Dummies

Construction site

One of the greatest weaknesses of "ask me a question, I'll give you an answer" content farms such as eHow.com – ignoring for now the incompetence of so many of their freelance "contributors" – is the open-ended nature of questions asked by some of the... less aware... information-seekers. That lets people who know as little about the topic as the OQ pretend to answer the question without bothering to provide information. Take, for instance, George N. Root III pretending to address "Activities to Build a House"¹ for Leaf Group's HomeSteady.com.

Cheap Garages, the Dummy Version

This is an A-frame, Judi

At least here in North America, most people who own A) their own home and B) own a car, park that car in a garage. Well, they do if the garage isn't so full of stuff that they can't get the car in. Whatever the case, if you don't have a garage and want to build one, you'll naturally be interested in "How to Build Your Own Garage for Cheap." If so, we certainly advise that you studiously avoid the post on the topic by Judi Light Hopson at Sapling.com.

Troubleshooting John Deere Snowblowers for Dummies

Troubleshoot your snowblower

You'd think that if someone googled "Problems with a John Deere Snowblower," the poor frozen schmuck would be looking for a little help troubleshooting a machine that either doesn't start or does a lousy job of clearing away the snow on his driveway (if he's like our neighbors at Antisocial Network HQ, he doesn't bother with sidewalks...). That's what you probably think, that's certainly what our research staffer thought... it's not, however, what Christine Lebednik seemed to think – at least according to her post at Hunker.com, anyway.

Hydroelectric Power for Dummies

Converting the kinetic energy of falling water to electric power

Over the past couple of decades, thousands – who knows, perhaps hundreds of thousands – of reports have been generated that bemoan the poor STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) results of the average educational system here in the good ol' USA. No one had to tell us about it, though: we see it every day in the work of self-appointed freelancers. Take, for example, the thinly-disguised ignorance in the Sciencing.com post "How Does a Waterfall Generate Power?" courtesy of Lauren Vork.

Butterfly Houses for Dummy Woodworkers

DIY butterfly house

If it weren't so often maddening, it would be amusing to see the complete hash some of the journalism and "communications" majors have made out of rewording simple instructions that they then posted at sites like eHow and WiseGeek (among many, many others). Some of the worst seem to be reserved for people attempting to explain woodworking projects, especially if the freelancer in question is unfamiliar with basic woodworking concepts. You know, like eHow's Tammy Lee Morris, who totally botched a quite well-written set of plans when she posted "How to Make a Butterfly House"¹ at GardenGuides.com.

Closing a Swiss Army Knife for Dummies

Lock-Blade Swiss Army Knife

One of our criteria for identifying dumbass freelancers is, to put it simply, a failure of logic. This failure is easiest to spot among the "contributors" who answered – or at least attempted to answer – questions for the late, unlamented eHow.com. That particular criterion¹ is why we selected Matt McGew for today's award: in an OurPastimes.com post entitled "How to Close a Swiss Army Knife," Matt showed that he couldn't figure out why someone wouldn't already know... because he apparently didn't realize that it's a valid question.

Doggy Crates for DIY Dummies

These plans will not make this crate...

Many of the staffers here at Antisocial Network World Headquarters are do-it-yourselfers, which is one reason why they spend a lot of time making fun of ridiculous DIY instructions at places like HomeSteady.com, HubPages.com, and Hunker.com (to name a few). The main reason a lot of people do it themselves is that they think they make something cheaper than a commercial version. We're gonna test that idea today based on and article at TheNest.com: "How to Build an Inside Wood Dog Crate" by Courtney McCaffrey.

Blackburn Trainers for Dummy Cyclists

Blackburn TrakStand Indoor Trainer

Don't ask us: we've never yet figured out why some of the people with "communications" degrees think they're instant experts on everything. Heck, we still haven't figured out why so many colleges have changed the name of the degree from "journalism." What we do know, though, is way too many self-appointed freelancers made a mess of their assignments at eHow.com, often because they knew nothing about the topic they were supposedly covering. Take, for example, eHowian Kay Tang and the lousy job she did on "Instructions for Blackburn TrakStand Bicycle Trainer" at SportsRec.com.

A Dummy's Version of the Rock Cycle

The rock cycle

In olden days, every "contributor" to the former Demand Media sites (eHow.com, SFGate.com, etc.) had to cobble together a short biography explaining their qualifications. That's how we know that the person writing utter rubbish about particle physics is the proud owner of an English BA or that the freelancer explaining how to build a deck is a college student studying journalism. We love those bios... we especially like the grandiose ones like that of Athena Hessong, who claimed she "draws upon experience and knowledge gained from teaching all high-school subjects for seven years." Yeah, sure: except that her Sciencing.com post "Rock Cycle Process"¹ suggests Athena didn't dabble much in Earth Sciences...

Floating Decks for Dummies

Floating decks

Here at the Antisocial Network, our staffers are almost certain that if our freelancing candidates don't know the definition of a structure, the only way they can address building or repairing it is the old million monkeys on a million typewriters trope. Our particular typewriter-banging freelancer today is Genae Valecia Hinesman, and we found her contribution to the stupidification of the internet at HomeSteady.com: feast your eyes on "How to Build a Floating Deck."¹

Dummy Answers to Ambiguous Questions

An electrician at work

One of the reasons our staffers spend so much time in the Leaf Group niche sites¹ is that the sites' "contributors" are so often incapable of answering open-ended questions. That fault may well have lain with eHow.com – the niches are filled with old eHow content moved by the successor to Demand Media – because of the site's strict limitations on content size. Then again, the fault may be the freelancer's lack of vision, such as that displayed by Denise Brandenberg. She apparently didn't think through the definition of "best" when writing, "The Best States to Work as an Electrician" at BizFluent.com (now at CareerTrend, which makes a lot more sense).

Bird Box Projects for Dummy Woodworkers

Roosting box

Our in-house DIYers tell us that it's ridiculously  easy to spot carpentry instructions written by people who've never actually performed the projects they are pretending to describe. One key to spotting them is a lack of familiarity with the nominal sizes of wood; a second is some rather goofy ideas of how to get pieces of wood to stick together. That's certainly the case of eHowian Zach Lazzari, whose post "DIY Bird Roosting Box"¹ was apparently part of a batch of "animals" content that the folks at Leaf Group pawned off on Mom.Me...

Contour Maps for Dummies

It's not always elevation, Lindsay!

Our staff geologist (yes, there is one) spent many years working in the petroleum industry, where a former boss introduced him to the nickname, "the contour factory." In olden days, geologists (and geophysicists) spent their days drawing contour lines: they'd generate contour maps of structure, thickness, porosity, permeability, even esoteric measurements like gamma ray maximum. If only WiseGEEK.com had asked someone like our staff geologist, "What Is a Contour Map?" Unfortunately, however, they asked Lindsey Rivas.

Exterior Door Installation, a Dummy Speaks

Door framing schematic

One of our staffers briefly wrote how-to posts for eHow.com back in the day, which is how we happen to have some inside knowledge of the workings of Demand Media Studios. More than accuracy and more than honesty, the folks at DMS valued SEO – search engine optimization. Their SEO gurus had determined that the optimum length for such content is 300-500 words, hence the all-holy minimum word count. Most of the time we find that candidates from DMS¹ pad their answers with useless (and sometimes wrong) material to reach that MWC. In this case, however, Billy McCarley had to omit useful information to pare "Exterior Door Installation Instructions"² down to stay in the sweet spot.

Calcite vs. Quartz for Dummies

Calcite rhombohedron on clear, prismatic quartz crystals

If we've said it once, we've said it a million times: don't exaggerate! Well, actually, what we've said something like 1097 times so far is, "Don't exaggerate your competence." By that we usually mean, "Don't use words you don't understand to describe things or processes with which you aren't familiar." Take, for example, freelancer and former teacher Yasmin Zinni and her Sciencing.com article, "Difference Between Quartz & Calcite": you'll find lots of... freelance fumbling... there.