When Freelancers Plagiarize Dummies

DIY table saw stand

Yesterday's DotD was one example of a freelancer who'd gotten his "information" from someone else's freelanced work; today's is another in the same vein. This time it's some anonymous drone from HowStuffWorks.com who baldly plagiarized the work of another anonymous drone at DoItYourself.com The project they both punted on was a relatively simple one, "How to Build a Table Saw Stand." Sadly, neither author had the courage to sign their work, so we're let to add yet another to the scrap heap of Anonymous rubbish.

The two sets of plans are identical, although Anonymous, Jr., reworded the rubbish s/he copied from DIY. Junior opened by suggesting why someone might need a table:

"If you use your table saw often, you probably don't want it lying on the floor, because you don't want to bend down each time to pick it up. "

Clearly, this moron had never used a table saw, since you don't "pick it up" every time you use it – if it's not mounted on a stand already, most people would set it on sawhorses... assuming they knew what sawhorses are. As Bugs Bunny might say, "What a maroon!"

The two bozos said to make a frame of 2-by-4s with a 3-foot-tall 4-by-4 in each corner, and sheathe the top in ¾-inch plywood. Everything's assembled using 2½-inch screws and the top is set in place with 1½-inc screws. Although Anonymous, Jr., gushed that,

"You can even build drawers to put accessories in,"

He/she/they had no words of wisdom about how to do that. He/she/they also, in keeping with the crap being plagiarized, said not one word about bracing the legs: no cross-bracing to steady the legs, no bracing in the corners where the legs meet the frame, no diagonal... just a ridiculously large flat-top table with four spindly legs held in place with somewhat undersized screws.

You know what'll happen to that piece of junk, right? It'll collapse. And that, dear readers, is why Anonymous is receiving our Dumbass of the Day award. Anonymous at DoItYourself deserved one, too and – no surprise here – another Anonymous (III?) pounded out the same bullshit plans at, you guessed it, eHow.com.¹

¹ Oops, Leaf Group deleted that crap, but you can still access it using the Wayback machine at archive.org. Its URL was   ehow.com/how_4928207_build-table-saw-stand.html

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