Riding Mowers for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXX

rear-engine riding mower

If you were paying attention in the halcyon days of eHow.com, you're probably well aware that the site's reputation was one of incompetents barfing up misinformation about whatever topics they managed to capture from a vast library of questions harvested from the 'net. Clearly, it did not matter that the "contributor" knew as little as – if not less – about the topic than the person asking the question. It was always all about the cash. If you still need convincing. all you have to do is take a look at some of the site's surviving content... content like "How Does a Riding Lawn Mower Work?" at GardenGuides.com, as barfed up by creative writing major-slash-musician Isaiah David.

DIY Sharpening Jigs for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXIV

shop-built blade jig

The more savvy "contributors" to the website eHow.com quickly learned that they could, to be frank, bullshit their way past the gatekeepers on any topic that was in the least technical. That's because those gatekeepers, holding the position known as "content editor," rarely understood the content they were supposedly editing. Instead, all they usually did was check the references (if any) and make certain that the content met the site's stringent style guide. As far as accuracy was concerned, "That wasn't their problem." The failure of the system was responsible for eHow's reputation as the mother lode of misinformation... misinformation like that printed by Chris Baylor in the GardenGuides.com article "DIY Lawnmower Blade Sharpener Jig."

How Dummies Change Tires on Snapper Mowers - The Freelance Files MMCLXXXVIII

Where's the spare, Ken?

This one's an oldie but a goodie (well, actually a "baddie"); first published more than a decade ago. In today's nominee, we learn – once again – that some freelancers would say anything to collect a few bucks from the people at Demand Media Studios¹ (DMS, as in, "You can't spell 'dumbass' without 'DMS.'"). One of them, today's award-winner, is a guy we've seen before: Kenneth Crawford; who way back in 2010 attempted to fool people, beyond the content editors, into believing that he knew "How to Change a Tire on a Snapper Lawn Mower" at GardenGuides.com. For the record, folks, Ken didn't know...

Building a Stable Pergola for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXXIV

stakes to keep posts plumb

In the bad old days of content farms, just about anyone who was even marginally literate could hang out a shingle and pretend to know enough about a topic to write instructions for sites like DIY.com and, especially, eHow.com. We wouldn't be the first to tell you this, but an awful lot of the content on such sites isn't worth the electrons it's printed on. We regularly point out some of the worst dross here, often drawn from the niche sites into which the owner of eHow (Leaf Group) dumps their old content. That includes content like today's nominee, a GargdenGuides. com post entitled "How to Stabilize a Pergola" by one Mary Lougee. 

Sharpening Jigs for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXV

one guy's blade sharpening jig

If the work by wannabe citizen journalists we tap for our awards isn't out-and-out bull, it usually falls into one of two broad categories: overly-specific answers to generic questions, or overly-generic answers to specific questions. We consider either one to be off-topic and fair game for a DotD nomination. Today's awardee pretty much falls into the first of the two. It's by a newbie who appears to have adopted a time-honored ehow.com contributor trick: Chris Baylor "answered" every question that contained the word "jig." That includes the GardenGuides.com post, "DIY Lawnmower Blade Sharpener Jig."

Rebuilding a Lawnmower Engine for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXI

small engine parts

One of the staffers was griping about his string trimmer recently and stated that he would "Never, never, never buy a gas-powered trimmer again." A couple of days later he sheepishly admitted that he had spend a few bucks at a local BigBox to get a carburetor adjustment tool, and his trimmer was running just fine now, thank you. We submit that even that experience is more than the minimal knowledge displayed by returning DotD Tom Lutzenberger, who failed to pay attention to a critical word in his GardenGuides.com attempt to explain "How to Rebuild Lawn Mower Engines."

Black Box Calculation for Dummies

driveway with small radius entrance

You know that old saying that goes, "Give a man a fish..."? Yeah, that one. well, today we're gonna meet a freelancer who hands out fish but doesn't teach people how to fish. We have a pretty good idea why she doesn't: she doesn't know, herself. She's ten-time DotD Charlotte Johnson, who thought she could bullshit her way through the eHow.com question, "How to Figure Square Footage for a Driveway With Radius Entrances" (now at GardenGuides.com). Char found an answer, of sorts, but it's a pretty safe bet she didn't know why it worked or, more importantly, under what circumstances her answer would – and wouldn't – work.

Decomposed Granite for Dummies

Natural decomposed granite (grus) and granite

If you've followed this blog at all, you know by now that our awardees are often victimized by the intersection of their own ignorance with the structure of the venue where they're writing. Our spies¹ tell us that contributors to the eHow.com websites were required to write a certain number of words (300-500) because the site's SEO gurus believed that was the "highest quality." Never mind that the concept of accuracy went out the window when their writes started padding a short answer with useless (and often misinterpreted) factoids. That, we suspect, is what happened to Tyler Lacoma when he submitted "What Is Decomposed Granite?" to eHow.com back in 2010 (it can now be found at the niche site GardenGuides.com).

That's Not a DIY 3-Point Hitch, Dummy

3-point hitch

Several of the staffers have worked on farms at one time or another, so they're reasonably familiar with the idea of a 3-point hitch. The operative phrase is, quite clearly, "3-point"; meaning that the system has thee points of attachment; typically describing a geometry similar to a capital letter A. That geometry is what made one of those former farmers submit today's DotD nomination, an eHow.com post by Cameron Easey titled, "DIY 3-Point Hitch Frame" (now found at GardenGuides.com).

Mantis Tiller Repair for Dummies

mantis tiller

It should come as no surprise that the eHow.com contributors who were unfamiliar with their topics were still perfectly happy to find a reference and simply reword it in order to collect their fifteen bucks. Who could blame them? the website didn't care about accuracy, only eyeballs. On the other hand, we here at the Antisocial Network are far more concerned about accuracy, which is why we regularly nominate eHowians for the DotD, eHowians like Fern Fischer, whom we caught  pretending to know "How to Fix a Mantis Tiller That Won't Start" for GardenGuides.com.

Tubeless Tires for Dummies

anatomy of a tubeless tire

Every day some unlucky staffer — usually the one who loses a rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock tournament — is assigned to check a couple dozen entries in this blog to see whether the nominee is still live on the Web and to find a copy in archive.org if it isn't. Not long ago, the poor intern (it's usually an intern for some reason) ran across a post pretending to explain how to patch a tubeless tire on a wheelbarrow. For the most part, we objected to the eHow contributor's inability to craft coherent instructions, though we noted that she did manage to mention seating the tire bead in the wheel. Well, that post is gone, and the link redirects to what is arguably an even worse set of instructions for tubeless tires. It's "How to Inflate a Flat Tubeless Tire on a Riding Lawn Mower," written by Elizabeth Knoll in the days she called herself Robin Gonyo, and now residing at GardenGuides.com.

Drainage Problems, the Dummy Solution

berms and swales

Suppose for a moment that you have a problem. No, not your love life or the way your dog keeps humping your significant other's leg. Let's pretend that you have "Drainage Problems Around a House Built on a Hillside." So, like most people today, you head for the internet and plug that description into the blank at your favorite search engine. What do you hope to find in return? We're of the opinion that given that sort of search, you're looking for solutions. That's not what eHowian John Walker seemed to think, however, at least based on his post at GardenGuides.com.

Foundation Types for Dummies

pier and beam basics

It's a tenet of faith here at the Antisocial Network that you can't go wrong saying, "Ask a stupid question, you'll get a stupid answer." Nowhere on the internet has been better evidence of that axiom's accuracy than the site we like to call the mother lode of misinformation: eHow.com. Now that the site's owners have started parceling our posts to niche sites, the misinformation has been spread around, but it's still just as clueless. Take, for instance Tyler Lacoma, whom we found attempting to address the monumentally stupid question, "Can a Pier & Beam Foundation Be Filled in With Slab?" at GardenGuides.com.

Upcycling Doors to Porch Swings for Dummies

Porch swing made from doors

Let's get this out of the way right up front: we have no complaints with people who are into "upcycling." Some of us have been known to practice the craft a time or two, though none of us would touch a pallet with a ten-foot pole. Still, no complaints. The people we do have problems with are the ones like eHow contributor Erin Ringwald and the hatchet job she did on "How to Make a Door Into a Porch Swing"¹ at GardenGuides.com.

Plywood Box Plans for Dummies

Simple Plywood Box

Some of the more snicker-worthy posts our staffers turn up while searching for DotD nominees involve plans for small-scale woodworking projects. Many of these authors reveal their ignorance of building things through their inability to transcribe someone else's plans or, even worse, fake their own. Want an example? No problem: take a look at what Amma Marfo had to say about "How to Make Your Own Heavy-Duty Plywood Storage Box" for GardenGuides.com.

Shed Footings for DIY Dummies

shed foundation with pier footings

Freelancers who attempt to write about DIY tasks should, in our humble opinion, have some experience with the project they're writing about. At the very least, the freelancer should be able to write intelligently and intelligibly about the subject, a minimum competence that was never required by Demand Media in the days of eHow. That's how people with AAS degrees in business, like one Stephanie Nolan, were able to get away with writing nonsense about topics like "DIY Footings for a Shed"¹ (it's at GardenGuides.com, for unknown reasons).

LVL Beams for Dummies

LVL beam joints aren't glued, Cecelia...

We've heard it said that there is no such thing as a stupid question, a maxim that we find absurd. Of course there are stupid questions: what do you think stupid people ask, anyway? If you cut the original questioner (OQ) some slack, though, you'll often realize that the question isn't stupid, it's just badly worded. That usually happens because the OQ doesn't know the topic well enough to put together a "good" question. Unfortunately, many an eHow contributor ran with those badly worded questions even though they didn't know the topic any better than the OQ. A case in point: Cecelia Owens, whom we caught attempting to explain "How to Glue LVL Beams Together" for... wait for it... GardenGuides.com.

Mower Blades for the Dummy Homeowner

Dull lawnmower blade

The freelancers who hacked their way through the early days of eHow learned quickly that the easiest way to amass vast piles of cash was to "claim" a bunch of "titles" that were all roughly the same question, and then rewrite the same answer for every one of them. At ten or fifteen bucks a pop, a dozen or so posts pounded out in a couple of hours could really add up, Of course, since it was eHow.com, most of them didn't care whether they gave the right answer, just that they got paid. And paid Elizabeth Knoll was, for "How to Loosen a Lawnmower Blade,"¹ now niched at GardenGuides.com.

Dummy Plans for Planters

wooden planter box

The people who brought you eHow.com (now known as Leaf Group) operated under the conceit that their "multi-point auditing system" helped them publish "the best information." Of course, anyone who paid attention knew that using ignorant freelancers to research information and equally ignorant freelancers to fact-check their work was never going to provide "the best information." This paucity of quality was especially obvious when those charged with fact-checking either didn't check the references or didn't understand them. Strange, but true... as in the case of Jesse Dempsen, whose GardenGuides.com article "How to Build a Planter Box From Fence Boards"¹ is a sparkling example.

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.