Windmill Plans, the Dummies Version

windmill turbine

Excuse us if we seem to be pedantic about it, but we're of the opinion that if you ask someone for plans to do something, you expect to get... well, you expect to get plans in return. More to the point, if the person you asked doesn't know how to perform whatever task you're researching, we would greatly prefer that they say so. That was, sadly, rarely the case at eHow.com, where a stable of freelance contributors regularly pounded out bushwa to collect their stipend. We're thinking of contributors like Nida Rasheed, whose "Plans to Build a Windmill" at Sciencing.com are a classic example.

Rasheed, in keeping with the demands of Demand Media, started with an introduction of 75-100 words, in which she explained what a windmill is and why someone might want to build one. That's wasted verbiage, in our opinion, because anyone looking for plans already knows the machine's intended use. But hey, her intro burned up a quarter of the minimum word count right there...
...which left Nida having to provide "plans." Her first two steps are site evaluation and code compliance instruction, which she lifted almost intact from an DOE website. Next, Nida's "plans" tell her readers to,

"Purchase a construction plan for a windmill."

No kidding, Nida! except for one small problem: you're supposed to be providing plans right here, right now, you blithering idiot! But, then, if your plans are as bad as what you pounded out for eHow, it's probably better that you tell people to find them elsewhere. We're talking about instructions such as,

• "Make sure the base is strong and heavy. Use concrete or sandbags to make the base stable. For a 5-foot high windmill, your base should be 18 inches square and 20 pounds in weight."
• "Attach the PVC pipe to the base to make the tower. Use a 2 x 4 PVC pipe for a 5-foot high windmill."
• "Install electrical fittings through the tower from the battery source for a more advanced model of the windmill to generate electricity."
• "Install the transformer in your house so that electricity generated from the windmill can be used in your house."

Yeah, sure. We don't even know where Rasheed came up with her bullshit, since her "references" are a general DOE article about using windmills and a high-pressure sales pitch that has NOTHING to do with plans. We couldn't even figure out whether it was for a windmill!

But hey: our Dumbass of the Day "studied social science," so we can be certain she has the necessary expertise... NOT!

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