Subscript, Superscript, Dummy - The Freelance Files MMCCXI

Subscript vs. Superscript

The people who created (and we use that term loosely) content for the former eHow.com sometimes became desperate for new topics, or as the contributors called them, "titles." When a so-called title drop occurred, some rushed to claim as many as possible, frantically scrambling for a reason to believe they had the necessary knowledge to "help" someone find an answer. Of course, some of them knew they didn't... but the most dangerous were those who believed they could reliably find and transfer any information. That apparently includes returning DotD Mark Koltko-Rivera, who pretended to know the answer to the eternal question, "How to Turn Off the Subscript" for ItStillWorks.com. Note to Dr. Rivera? You didn't...

Sub Box Plans for Dummies

car subwoofer box

Although it might seem to the uninitiated that certain freelancers for the former eHow.com had expertise to share on certain subjects – at least based on the number of posts they pounded out on related topics – the sad truth is that any expertise is merely a result of grabbing a number of similar "titles" and rewriting the same misinformation several times. A case in point is history major Nichole Liandi, who posted multiple articles about audio for "boom box cars," including the ItStillRuns post "How to Build a 12 inch Subwoofer Box."

Ratchet Heads for the Dummy Tool User

Ratchet drive socket wrench

What a concept: today marks the fourth consecutive day in which our DotD nominee (all of them originally at eHow.com) changed the meaning of the original question in their assignment to make it easier to answer, because they didn't understand the question, or both. We suspect usually both... Whatever the case, please give a warm Antisocial Network welcome to Hans Fredrick and his ItStillRuns.com post, "How to Get the Head off a Socket Wrench."

Splicing Cables for Dummies

This is what splicing means, Greyson

As our staffers wander the back roads of the 'net, specifically the niches into which the modern equivalent of Demand Media Studios¹ are stuffing old eHow.com content for SEO purposes, they come across some pretty hilarious bogosity. Some of the penny-hungry college kids were prone to the MSU² technique for answering questions when there was no good answer (or just because they were lazy). This time, we've caught returning DotD Greyson Ferguson pretending to be of use to whomever asked "How to Splice a VGA Cable" (now at ItStillWorks.com).

BIOS Changes for a PC Dummy

BIOS utility screen

Our staffers often run across questions for which there is a simple answer, questions that some mindless drone of a freelancer managed to pump out several hundred words by the simple expedient of 1) misinterpreting the question and 2) giving a wrong answer. We're talking about questions like the one we found at ItStillWorks.com; a question submitted by someone who wanted to know "How to Edit BIOS From a Command Line." The answer is generally, "You can't," but that's not what eHowian Breann Kanobi had to say.

DIY Amplifiers for Dummies

Megaphone

We regularly run across bizarre questions with equally (if nor more) bizarre answers when the staffers venture into the murky waters of the niche sites formerly known as eHow.com. Between misinterpretation of  the question and misunderstanding of some reference scraped off the bottom of the search engine results, the freelance contributors have come up with some real winners over the years. Really: winners like the schlock job Meaghan Ellis did on "How to Amplify Sound Using Household Items," now languishing at ItStillWorks.com... as if it ever did.

Keyboard Shortcuts for Dummies

keyboard shortcuts

Sometimes we have to wonder just what was going through the minds of the freelancers we feature here at the moment they hit "publish" (or the equivalent) on their chosen platform. Did they ever wonder if someone was going to come along later and make fun of them? Or did they just envision more bucks flying into their bank accounts? Well, we're all about choice number one, especially for eHowian Vera Leigh and her ItStillWorks.com post, "How to Reduce the Size of Pages on the Web."¹

Excel Macros for Dummies

Recording an Excel macro

From time to time our research team members run across posts that are so transparently bogus that they don't even rate a second glance. Take, for instance – and by "take," we mean "take to the trash" – eHow.com's Stephanie Ellen (sometimes known as S. Deviant) and her post, "How to Automate an Excel Spreadsheet." This post, now at ItStillWorks.com, is so... so... we don't know what! that it should have been published at a website that doesn't have "editors¹"!

Tinning Speaker Wires for Dummies

tinning a wire with solder

No one here at the the Antisocial Network claims to be an audiophile, although a couple of us have remarked recently that they'd forgotten how "pure" vinyl sounds until they hooked up that old turntable again after a couple of decades. Be that as it may, the people here are at least aware enough to understand the significance of a search for "Copper Vs. Tinned Speaker Wire." That beats eHowian Rachel Lucio, who tried to address the same question at ItStillWorks.com.

CPU Usage for Tech Dummies

CPU usage monitor

Every day, our research staffers stumble over content written by freelancers more interested in cash than in accuracy. We're all pretty certain that the mother lode of such misinformation is the conglomeration of niche sites into which Leaf Group has moved (most of) the old eHow.com content. We still find an "old friend" in one of the niches from time to time; someone like freelancing English major Andrea Stein. Andrea lent her considerable ignorance on the topic of "What Is CPU Usage on a Computer," which Leaf has moved to ItStillWorks.com. We aren't certain why it's not at Techwalla, to be frank.

Deleting Browser History for Dummies

data recovery - recover deleted files

If we've said it once, we've said it a thousand times: you can't trust the bull some random person threw at the internet just to earn a few bucks. Oh, sure, some freelancers are selective and only write about topics "in their wheelhouse," so to speak. The problem is that too many others, especially those at content farms, have merely googled a question and reworded the first half-coherent search result. A lot of them seem to have or be working on "communications" and journalism degrees, which they seem to believe makes them capable of writing about anything. They're not: witness Melissa King attempting to explain "How to Permanently Delete the Internet Browsing History on a PC" for ItStillWorks.com.

Booting from a Flash Drive for Dummies

Bootable USB drive

A long time ago, we figured out that the minimum word count (MWC) at Demand Media Studios^1,2,3  provided "cover" for a lot of people who, to be blunt, had no idea what they were talking about. The most common symptoms of a freelancer faking it are often answering the wrong question, throwing all sorts of factoids at the page to meet the MWC, or a combination of both. Today's DotD nominee, Blair Williams (not the hunky actor from "LA Law") tried both methods in pretending to answer the question "What Files are Needed to Boot From a USB?" at ItStillWorks.com. We said "pretending to answer" because... well, because he didn't.

Digital Television for Dummies

TV Digital television

About a million years ago – 2009, if you're really interested – the U. S. television broadcasting system went digital. Plenty of people found themselves confused by the switch, not least because the FCC kept talking about "digital," while people making money off the switch talked about "high-definition." Consequently, plenty of people had questions, and plenty had answers. Not all of those answers were good, though: some were like the post called "Can You Receive Digital Broadcasts on a Digital TV Without Box?" [sic] penned by George N. Root III and appearing at ItStillWorks.com.

Browser Cookies for Dummies... Again

Browser cookies

In case you haven't noticed, Americans have a weight problem. Maybe it's because they don't know what to do with cookies.Wait, not that kind of cookies: a surprising number of Americans don't seem to be able to figure out what to do with the cookies that web browsers (well, actually, websites you visit with your browser) leave all on your computer. That's probably why people type searches like "How to Remove Cookies With Windows 7"¹ into their favorite search engine. Sadly, one of the first "answers" they'll get is an eHow.com article (now filed under ItStillWorks by the folks at Leaf) that Keith Patrick scribbled down late one night...

Magellan GPS Initialization for Dummies

Typical GPS Initialization Screen

Among the most fascinating features of the old Demand Media website, eHow, is that you could often find almost identical topics addressed by different people. What makes it fascinating is that despite the sites' claims that the content was edited for accuracy, it is common to find that "answers" to very similar questions submitted by different "contributors" were themselves different. Ideally, two posts came at a question from different directions, but sometimes both of them were, to be blunt, utter bull. That was the case when Melissa King posted "Magellan GPS Won't Initialize," moved first to Leaf Group's niche site OurEverydayLife.com then to ItStillWorks.com, then deleted¹.

Copying a Program for Dummies

The likely consequences of following Tiesha's guide

Our founder's late mother-in-law, bless her cotton-pickin' little heart, was one of those people who somehow decided that she was computer-literate because she could use an electric typewriter. One time he caught her editing the system files on her Windows computer, deleting lines she didn't think were necessary. Needless to say, she needed more help than he could give her. Thank goodness this was long before eHow.com and people like Tiesha Whatley got into the "advice" business, since Whatley is no more computer-literate than she was. Want proof? Just read her post titled "How to Copy Programs to a Memory Stick" (now brought to you by ItStillWorks.com, even if it never did)...

Typewriters for the Clueless Office Drone

margin levers on IBM Selectric®

Back in ye olden days, when the latest boy band members were just a gleam in their daddies' eyes; people wrote business letters, essays, and even personal correspondence on a device called a "typewriter." We suspect that if you wanted information on how to use these devices, along with 8-track players and rotary-dial telephones, you'd be wise to ask someone who has actually used one a time or two; not the likes of  eHowian Richard Kalinowski (aka James Gapinski), who we rather suspect has only seen a typewriter in a classic movie or perhaps an antique store. Regardless of the lack of any experience doing so, however, we found Richard attempting to explain "How to Set Margins on a Typewriter" at BizFluent.com... of course (it's at ItStillWorks.com these days).

Topography and Elevation for Dummies

GPS showing elevation
on screen

One of the hallmarks of the self-appointed freelance journalists on the internet is an inability to see the direct route from question to answer; an inability that pretty much permeates eHow.com (yes, them again). The reason may be that in the DMS¹ world, the writer must pad simple answers out to meet the minimum word count. It may also be that the writers themselves simply have no idea what the answer should be. We think the latter is the case for Kurt Schanaman in his post "How to Find Land Elevation"² (now moved to the website ItStillWorks.com, even though it never did), though the minimum word count thing probably didn't help.

Why someone might want to know elevation is unknowable, but Schanaman gives it a go:

Designing a Home for Dummies

A Small house plan

At the Antisocial Network offices, we spend a portion of each day hoping to expose the sort of factual rubbish that arises when greed intersects stupidity in the form of internet freelancers. Although the model is dead as a doornail now, at one point just about anyone could pick up a few bucks pretending to be 1) a professional writer and 2) knowledgeable on some topic or other; and not necessarily number two. Once those criteria had been met, the mother lode of misinformation, eHow, would pay "contributors" flat fees to answer questions harvested from the internet. They didn't pay well, but the contributors generally didn't deserve what little they got. Take, for example, Kelly Sundstrom, seen here attempting to explain "How to Make a Floor Plan on the Computer" (moved to the niche site ItStillWorks.com, and then deleted¹).

Laptop Boot-Up for Dummies

Laptop computer

If google's so-called Panda update (we know, we know -- it wasn't named for the bamboo-eating mammal, "Panda" is a google employee's surname) hadn't washed away the dross from some of the worst content farms, today's internet would be awash in crap content (not that it isn't, what with endless Kardashian bullshit and countless YouTube cat videos. Say, have you seen the one of the Antisocial Network's office cat? she's so cute! As it is, there's still plenty of the rubbish left to go around for an unwary searcher who wanders into the wrong website. Take, for instance, the poor sap who happens to run across the eHow post by Dianne Christensen-Hermance (sometimes known as Dianne Christensen-Herman) while desperately seeking help because, he or she complains, "My Laptop Computer Won't Boot Up"¹ at ItStillWorks.com.