A Homemade Grooming Table for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXLVI

DIY grooming table

Some of the freelance writers who infested the original eHow.com in the site's earliest days developed a technique that served their bank accounts well, although it rarely served the web surfers who stumbled over their output. Simply put, when asked a how-to question, the contributor (as eHow called them) would find a blog describing doing the project and just reword it. eHow put a stop to this in later years because blogs are notoriously unauthoritative, but early examples are still out there. Today's nominee is one such example, "HOW TO MAKE A HOMEMADE DOG GROOMING TABLE" [CAPS theirs] by returning DotD J. Lang Wood (moved from eHow to Mom.com, a website Leaf Group appears to have sold off).

Bird Box Projects for Dummy Woodworkers

Roosting box

Our in-house DIYers tell us that it's ridiculously  easy to spot carpentry instructions written by people who've never actually performed the projects they are pretending to describe. One key to spotting them is a lack of familiarity with the nominal sizes of wood; a second is some rather goofy ideas of how to get pieces of wood to stick together. That's certainly the case of eHowian Zach Lazzari, whose post "DIY Bird Roosting Box"¹ was apparently part of a batch of "animals" content that the folks at Leaf Group pawned off on Mom.Me...

Specific Gravity for Dummy Aquarium Owners

Salt water aquarium

The research staff here at the Antisocial Network have noticed an interesting phenomenon (yes, that's the singular form of "phenomena") while scouring the internet for stupid freelancers. OK, in all honesty, it doesn't take much work – they work a couple of minutes a day and play Candy Crush or Words with Friends the rest of the time. Whatever. Anyway, that phenomenon we mentioned is that when people start bullshitting about unfamiliar topics, they apparently get so involved in keeping their stories straight that they forget about basic, knowledge – penny wise and pound foolish, as Grandma might have said. Take, for instance, regular "contributor" Larry Parr, who forgot a lot of basics while trying to explain to his eHow.com audience "How to Lower the Specific Gravity of a Saltwater Tank," sold(?) by Leaf Group to another content farm, Mom.Me...