Homemade Wine Racks for Dummies

Pigeonhole wine rack unit

Among the multitude of pet peeves of the Antisocial Network staffers as a group are freelancers who fake their references and carpentry plans that play fast and loose with measurements. Today's DotD nominee is guilty of both, but that comes as no surprise. Janos Gal has already demonstrated an unfamiliarity with citing references and, even more to today's point, a total lack of knowledge of lumber and woodworking. Let's have a look at the mess he made of the eHow instructions for "How to Make a Wine Rack for a Small Cabinet." You're gonna love it...

The Kola Borehole for Dummies

Mirny Diamond Mine

Among the staffers here at the Antisocial network who have a scientific bent, little is more frustratingly amusing than observing the goofy manner in which the scientifically illiterate mangle facts during their freelance forays into the worlds of STEM topics. Take, for instance, UniverseToday.com contributor Jerry Coffey, who liberally reworded an article that was probably more authoritative to write his post "Deepest Hole in the World."

Homemade Heat Tape for Dummies

Heat tape for water pipe

A common theme here at the Antisocial Network is finding a freelancer who lacks even the slightest grounding in a technical topic, but "writes to it" anyway. Sometimes the juxtaposition is merely stupid or funny, but in others the lack of know-how leads to an "answer" that is ridiculously incompetent; at the worst, downright dangerous. Today's nominee is one of the latter: she's theology student turned "creative writer" Andrea Helaine, whom we caught trying to explain making "Homemade Heat Tape" for Sciencing.com.

Tire Diameter for Dummy Drivers

Tire Rolling Diameter

Although most of our DotD nominees are featured for foolish mistakes (most related to ignorance and/or inability to copy-reword-paste Wikipedia), more than a few of them are self-described "professional writers" who dip their toes in the wrong subject. Today's nominee is a case in point; Mark Kennan is a business writer who knows so little about the automotive industry that he tried to turn "How to Calculate Tire Turns Per Mile" into a math question for Sciencing.com.

PVC Driveway Decorations for Dummies

driveway arch

We've been following the Leaf Group rewrite team from afar, often giggling at the antics of some of its members. While a few of them actually do some research to correct errors and gross stupidity, others merely assume that what was already written was correct; just rewording a bit and adding some extraneous bushwa to make the article longer. Today's nominee, Nicole or Nicky LaMarco is a prime example. Have a look at her stellar rewrite of the HomeSteady.com topic, "How to Build an Archway Over the Driveway From PVC." Tsk. Tsk.

Intake Manifolds for Dummies

plenum intake manifold

In the bad old days of eHow.com (before Leaf Group shoved most of the site's content into oddly named niches), contributors were forbidden to use Wikipedia as a source. We assume that's because Wikipedia had/has a poor reputation: is that the pot calling the kettle black, or what? Whatever the case, lots of contributors simply reworded the Wikipedia article for the topics whey didn't understand and then slapped a bogus reference on the article... much like Andrea Stein did for her ItStillRuns.com article, "What Is a Plenum on an Intake Manifold?"

More Miter Saws for Dummy Carpenters

We admit it, folks: even the staffers at the Antisocial Network get lazy from time to time, and today's one of those days. The sad fact is that once we find a dependably lazy and ill-informed freelancer, we'll perform a quick search to see what other misinformation this doofus has published. That's exactly what is happening here today: we'd already caught eHowian Patrick Nelson misinforming on miter saws¹ once, why expect anything else he had to say on the subject would be any better? And we were right: check out his other eHow.com post on the topic "How to Mount a Miter Saw."

Levers for the Dummy Physics Student

Mechanical disadvantage in a lever system

Most of our nominees for the Antisocial Network's daily award are freelance writers who have sacrificed any credibility they might have had for a few pennies in reward; pretending to have knowledge of some facts or procedure for no other reason than to expand their bank accounts. Today's a little different. Not much, but a little: today's nominee got some of what he wrote correct, but he presented it so badly we couldn't help but wonder how he completed that journalism degree. Have a look at what Sciencing.com contributor Brock Cooper did to the topic, "Mechanical Disadvantages of a Lever System."

Chloroplasts for Dummy Biology Students

Chloroplast anatomy

The geekier folks among the Antisocial Network staffers often find themselves aghast at the ignorance of the freelance writers they turn up in their searches, especially some of the J-school grads who ended up "contributing" to eHow. Of course, we don't know how many of them also contributed to other, now-defunct, content farms like AssociatedContent and Helium, but it's a safe bet some did. More's the pity, then that scientific illiterates like Sheri Lamb managed to get rubbish like "Why Are Chloroplasts So Important?"¹ published at sites like GardenGuides.com.

Mud Logging for Dummies

mudlogger in trailer

When it comes to careers, we've always been of the rather old-fashioned opinion that if you're curious abut what a professional does, you should probably ask someone who actually does the job or has at least seen it performed. Asking some retired upcycling freelancer questions like, "What Does a Mudlogging Geologist Do?" isn't a particularly good idea. Maybe you should ask a petroleum geologist... like ours. He found a version of the "answer" to that question Terrie Brockmann wrote for WiseGEEK.com, but it was pretty much substandard.

Jumper Cables for Dummies

How to connect jumper cables

An Antisocial Network staffer was at her local grocery the other day and noticed a motorist sitting in his car with the hood open. She wandered over and asked, "Need a jump?" He did and, as luck would have it, she had jumper cables behind the seat of her classic 1988 Toyota pickup. She set the cables up, goosed the engine, and gave him the thumbs up. The starter whirred immediately, but the car didn't start. Apparently the motorist, like others (including Dwight Malone of ItStillRuns.com), thought that a jump would solve any starting problems. He needed to ask himself, "How do I Troubleshoot a Car That Won't Start Even With a Jump Start?"¹

Antipodes for Dummies

four quarters of the globe

Although there's no geographer or cartographer on staff at the Antisocial Network, several of our science-y types have a long history of working with maps. They're the ones who are responsible for lambasting the freelancers who get confused about "State Place Coordinate Systems" and commit other map projection boo-boos. One of them brought a simple little freelance article to the table for today, a post called "How to Calculate Antipode" at Sciencing.com, penned by Bob Barber.

Veneer for Dummy Woodworkers

This is what veneer looks like in the wild

It irritates our staffers no end when some witless, know-nothing freelancer simply rewords one source to "write" another. Around here, we call that "plagiarism," but the folks at eHow (now Leaf Group) apparently called it "contributing." The ire of our staff was raised today by one Natalie Andrews, who lifted all of what she thought were the pertinent details from an Australian hardwood purveyor when pretending to write, "Advantages & Disadvantages of Veneer Boards" for the mother site.

Sound Waves for Dummies

We often find that the "contributors," as eHow.com called their freelancers, were flummoxed by the constraints of the site's formatting rules. One such rule that caught a lot of them was the minimum word count (MWC). In olden days (we think that Leaf Group has changed the word-count restrictions), each submission was required to be somewhere in the 300 to 500 word range, regardless of how many words actually needed to address a topic. That's what caught today's nominee, Chris Burke, in his post "Importance of Sound Waves" at Sciencing.com.

Polishing Granite for Dummies

polished rocks, including some granite

It should come as no surprise that many times we award our DotD to someone who we are pretty certain misinterpreted a question or topic, usually because the writer lacks the basic knowledge to understand what some random netizen was asking about; much less write something informative. To that end, let's take a look at what Adrian Grahams wrote about the topic "How to Polish Granite Rock Yourself" for eHow.com, a post since migrated (for some unknown reason) to Hunker.com.

Bicycles and Hip Replacement for Dummies

What type of bicycle do you need?

Far be it from anyone here at the Antisocial Network to give medical advice (except, perhaps, when it comes to correcting common dumbassery). When it comes to your health and your body, we think you should stick to getting advice from professionals; by which we mean doctors, nurses, physical therapists, and other trained professionals; not a "professional freelancer" with a BFA in film. That's why today's DotD nominee is one such freelancer, Breann Kanobi¹, and we caught her attempting answer the eternal question, "How do I Choose the Correct Bicycle After Hip Replacement Surgery? " at SportsRec.com

Joists for Dummy Carpenters

wood joist framing

When the time comes to have construction work done on a building, we're inclined to think that we would rather consult a carpenter that some freelancer with a BFA in creative writing. After all, someone who has to look up common building terms probably doesn't know how to build things, either... At least that's the impression we got when we looked into a post at WiseGEEK.net, "What Are the Types of Joist Design?"; as concocted by Andrew Kirmayer. The post has since been moved, for unknown reasons, to AlltheScience.com ("science"? really?).

Virus Safety, the Stupid Version

Viruses vs. bacteria

A physician of our acquaintance (the daughter-in-law of a staffer) bemoans the proliferation of "antibacterial" products. With just a few exceptions, she won't allow them in her home because she knows that overuse of the products is likely to evolve ever more resistant strains of bacteria. She, like us at the Antisocial Network, was absolutely flabbergasted at the ignorance she encountered when she read the article "How to Kill Viruses" that Melanie Fleury posted to azCentral.com (a niche site of eHow... are you not surprised?)

A-Frames for Dummy Swing Builders

Lets' see you cut this with a miter box!

Little, if anything, sparks greater joy among a couple of our search team members than finding some former high-school "journalist" and creative writing grad trying to describe DIY carpentry projects. It happens with amazing frequency in the former eHow.com niches, where much of the content bears little resemblance to useful instructions. In today's DotD nomination, we see how eHowian Joanne Robitaille made a mess of "How to Build an A-Frame Swing Set." We went back to the original at eHow to see all the goodies Leaf Group managed to omit when they migrated it from eHow.com to Hunker.com.

Router Bits for Woodworking Dummies

straight router bit

The staff of the Antisocial Network would much rather be able to point to a specific name (or pseudonym) when it comes time to award our DotDs, mostly because it's just not very satisfying to point to some anonymous drone as the source of internet stupidification. Once in a while, however, we come across content so mind-numbingly dumb that we just can't resist... So, meet the Anonymous HowStuffWorks.com contributor who inflicted "Are there router bits for a drill?" on the 'net.

According to anonymous (no name is associated with this dreck in any archived version of the post),

Stationary Bike Flywheels for Fitness Dummies

Spin bike

When people ask questions on the internet, we suspect they want knowledgeable answers. answers that both make sense and are fairly easy to understand. That's one reason why we make a habit of lambasting freelancers who seem to think that their research skills make them experts on everything: too often, they cheat their readers. Take, for instance, the poor schmuck who wanted to know about "The Differences in Flywheel Weights & Spinning Bikes," which Elizabeth Stewart tackled for SportsRec.com.

Excel Charts for Dummies

Sample survivorship curves

If the truth be told, we here at the Antisocial Network have very little patience with people who pretend they know something but are in reality ignorant. We especially dislike said people when they pretend to be knowledgeable because they are greedy and want to make some money. Surely you can understand? You don't? Well, let's look at an example, the Techwalla.com post "How to Make a Survivorship Chart on Excel" as written by someone claiming to be named Vera Leigh. You know, "Verily"? Truthful? Well, not so much this time...

Edge Flashing for Dummies

Edge flashing for a roof

Around the Antisocial Network, we know that a homeowner's most dangerous enemy is water. It doesn't have to be a flood, though, because water is nothing if not patient. Any building that isn't carefully sealed is gonna leak, the leaks are gonna cause wet wood, and the wet wood is gonna rot. Over the centuries, builders have figured out that one way to keep water away from the wood is to use metal flashing to prevent water from penetrating. That's why your home's roof has different kinds of flashing in different places. If you think it needs more, though, you'd better not ask the likes of HomeSteady.com's Missy Farage questions like, "How do I Install an Edge Flashing on a Patio Roof?"¹

UTM Zone Calculation for Dummies

UTM Zones of North America

It's sad to say, but the internet has made dumbasses out of just about all of us, even (occasionally) the staff of the Antisocial Network. As a general rule, however, people around here are a little more aware of what's going on in the world writ large than are the likes of eHowian Nick Botero. Nick, despite having completed coursework for at least two college degrees, apparently never learned how to think. We base that observation on his rather useless answer to some poor schmuck wondering "How to Determine the UTM Zone" at Synonym.com.

Carburetors for Dummies

Many of the staff at the Antisocial Network have never seen a personal vehicle that has a carburetor instead of fuel injection, although many have at least passing acquaintance with the two-stroke carbs on lawn equipment. Of course, making any adjustments to two-stroke carbs is likely to induce extreme frustration, so they'll admit to not having tried it (for the most part). We do, of course, have a few old-timers who've worked on pre-Clean Air Act engines, so the ItstillRuns.com article, "How to Tune & Modify Carburetor Performance" (penned by Cassandra Tribe) wasn't all that scary a topic.

DAT Files for Dummies

After our staffers trip over some bit of suspected freelance dumbassery codified in an online post, a couple of things take place. First, the staffer consults experts (people who know about the topic as opposed to freelance "journalists") to make certain their suspicion of dumbassery is correct and second, they check the writers' bios to see why they might have said something so dumb. That's what surprised us about "How to Edit a DAT File" at Chron.com: the author says he has a degree in computer science (one LinkedIn says Steve McDonnell hadn't used in 30 years)...

Resources for Dummies

Renewable energy resources

You might have heard that there is no such thing as a stupid question, but face the facts: we all know that isn't true. If questions were arranged on a bell curve, half of then would be below average, so some of them must be stupid. In fact, we know of one... well, it's not really a question, per se, but it's still stupid. The sad thing is that in her Sciencing.com answer, Heather Bliss proved herself pretty much the intellectual equal of whomever wanted a "List of Earth's Resources"...

Map Coordinates for Dummies

Common map projection types

There's an ongoing debate among our staffers concerning what everyday concept is the blackest "black box" when it comes to internet freelancers. Some think it's the oil industry, others are pretty convinced that the subject of electricity and electrical systems is the ultimate enigma. Over in the corner, however, one of the Antisocial Network's more curmudgeonly researchers claims it's map projections. Leaf Group's rewrite specialist Kevin Beck and his attempt to explain "How to Convert Northing/Easting Coordinates to Longitude/Latitude" definitely support his argument.