Subduction for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXXVII

Continent-continent convergence

Watching amateur freelancers attempt to write about topics on which they're ignorant is never pretty. Pros like, say, Mary Roach, spend months or even years talking through the subject with experts, but the self-appointed "professional writers" who plied their trade at sites like eHow.com and WiseGEEK.com didn't have the luxury of immersion in the topic. Consequently, their work was often rife with error; so much so that around the AN headquarters we call eHow the "mother lode of misinformation. WiseGEEK is little better, as evidenced by the crap job returning DotD S. Mithra did on the AlltheScience.com post, "What is a Subduction Zone?"

Sedimentology for Dummies

Sedimentologist at work

By now, it should be no secret that one of the things that truly peeves our staffers is people who publish a huge corpus of freelance "work" at internet sites even though they are bereft of knowledge about their topics. In our humble opinion, as people used to say, the worst are the ones who've contributed multiple knowledge-free posts on related topics, mostly because... well, hubris – that, and greed. With us today is a freelancer who, although utterly lacking in the necessary background, we've found attempting to write about earth sciences eight times. Well, nine, including today: it's Mary McMahon (formerly S. E. Smith), with the WiseGEEK.com post "What is Sedimentology?" (now at niche AlltheScience.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?).

Shale Gas for Dummies

Schematic of fraacked horizontal well

For whatever reason, the path from "a dead dinosaur"¹ to your SUV's gas tank is a complete black box for most consumers. Some appear to be so disconnected from reality that they apparently think that there is an oil well under every gas station. Others know this to be a fallacy, but know little else. In the case of one freelancer, WiseGEEK.com writer James Doehring, the "little else" business is pretty obvious as he tries to explain "What is Shale Gas?" for the site's AlltheScience.com niche.

Clastic Rocks for Dummies

Conglomerate

Every once in a while we dig up the staff geologist and force him to peruse the gobbledygook some of our DotD freelancers have managed to get published in their continuing efforts to stupidify the internet. Most of the time he's had to disabuse readers of the notion that Earth's tectonic plates float on an ocean of magma or that hydrocarbons collect in pools, pockets, and layers. The folks at WiseGEEK.com, however, often manage to screw up very specific scientific questions... questions like "What Are Clastic Rocks?" as supposedly answered by Mary McMahon for WiseGEEK niche AlltheScience.com.

Contours for Utter Dummies

We don't think this is topography, Felicia

Our research staffers have been at this game long enough that some of them can identify a DotD candidate from the first sentence of a freelanced article. That's almost always true at sites like WritEdge and HubPages, where members just dump crap on the site willy-nilly. Sadly, it's also pretty true of sites with "editors"; sites such as eHow.com and WiseGEEK.com. After all, if the editors don't know jack, how can they correct factual errors? Which brings us to today's nominee, WiseGEEK writer Felicia Dye (and editor Heather Bailey), who collaborated in "What are Contour Lines?" which we found at AlltheScience.com.

Thermal Conduction for the Dummy Physics Student

Thermal conduction

Most content farms – the ones that claimed to have "standards" instead of letting any self-described freelancer publish anything – seem to prefer contributors with English and journalism (aka "communications") degrees. This preference, unfortunately, tends to mean that STEM topics get short shrift. WiseGEEK.com apparently subscribes to this preference, at least in the case of M. R. Anglin and her AlltheScience.com post, "What is Thermal Conduction?"

Barium Sulfate for Dummy X-Ray Techs (WiseGeek Week 1)

Human intestinal tract imaged
with barium contrast medium

It's been a while since we cast the Antisocial Network spotlight on a single site, but ever since we identified our first DotD from WiseGeek.com a couple of months ago, the staffers have been compiling a backlog of other candidates from the site. With forty or fifty possible candidates already in the files, we decided now was the time. Without further ado, then, we give you the first WiseGeek week winner, Felicia Dye, and her article "What is Barium Sulfate?" (now at the niche site AlltheScience.com, a misnomer if there ever was one.