Shimano Derailleur Adjustment for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXXXIV

derailleur barrel adjuster

It is astonishing (though it probably shouldn't be)  to our house bike mechanic that the first step of damned near every eHow.com post purporting to tell people how to adjust the rear derailleur on a bicycle includes some variation on the words "loosen the cable bolt." It's as if all those freelancing morons just copied one another's work, swapping in "Altus" for "Tourney" or "SRAM" for "Shimano." Oddly, it seems as though they all cited a book for their "reference," too. Well, we have a REAL reference, one that's online, and we'll point you to it in a few minutes. But first, let's look at just how clueless one Donovan Gillis proved himself in the SportsRec.com post, "How to Adjust a Shimano Tourney Derailleur."

How Dummies Set a Bicycle Computer - The Freelance Files MMCXCI

Setting wheel size in mm

Among the seven habits of highly irritating freelancers, one stands out to the staffers of the Antisocial Network as supremely irritating. That's the habit of what we call "redefinition." In cases of redefinition, the ignorant, lazy, or greedy – or any combination of the three – freelancer redefines the question to make it easier to answer. Through the process of redefinition, today's nominee – Rocco Pendola, whom we've already tagged three times for exaggerating his bicycle expertise – utterly ignored the actual meaning of the task "How to Set the Wheel Size in a Bike Computer" to make it possible to collect his fifteen bucks from eHow.com (the post is now at SportsRec.com).

A DIY Skateboard Ramp for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXLI

It really chaps the collective hiney of our staffers to come across a freelance post in which someone with no experience or knowledge of a project pretends to provide instructions by rewording some tangentially related general reference. That is, however, exactly what today's nominee did, collecting her fifteen-buck stipend from the idiots at Demand Media for a post that is essentially useless. Let's give a warm (not) welcome to J-school grad Tracy Morris, back for her second award, for the SportsRec.com post, "How to Build a Concrete Skate Ramp."

Bike Chain Installation for Dummies

Bicycle on repair stand

If there's any one thing that drives us nutser than stupidity in a freelance writer, it just might be stupidity in a content farm. We're about to lay waste to some English major who thought he could copy-reword-paste instructions for "How to Install a 21-Speed Bike Chain," but first we'd like to point out that the photo SportsRec.com put up alongside the post by Ryan Haas shows some department-store bike assembler with an open-end wrench installing the back wheel of a bike with an internal-hub derailleur. In our book, that's just plain stupid.¹ So is the "reference" someone from SportsRec slapped at the bottom of the post, which is, believe it or not, entitled "The Effect of Open and Closed Kinetic Chain Exercises on Dynamic Balance Ability of Normal Healthy Adults." Yep: stupid.

Building a Skateboard Park for Dummies

backyard skateboard bowl

We've always believed that when someone pulls up Google and types in "how to build..." in the search box, they are looking for the whole story – not just the easy parts. Sadly, people looking to eHow.com for how-to help didn't always find everything they needed. not to mention that what they did find was often questionable. A case in point is some poor sk8r looking for instructions on "How to Build a Homemade Concrete Bowl for Skateboarding." We'll grant that the project looks daunting, but that never stopped the greed-sucking freelancers at eHow, as you can tell from the SportsRec.com post written by Tom Lutzenberger.

Front Derailleurs for Dummies

barrel adjuster at cable stop

It bugs the staff cyclists no end to find "maintenance" tips written by people who've clearly never maintained their bicycles. Although the notion that anyone can reword text seems to have been shoveled into the open heads of certain college disciplines, the sad truth is that it doesn't work if you don't understand the topic. That's what seems to have caught eHow.com's Nicole Greenman when she tried to explain, "How to Adjust a Shimano 105 Front Derailleur" (now at SportsRec.com).

Mountain Bike Sizing for Dummies

bicycle frame components

We've noticed over the years that even the supposedly vetted freelancers for the "specialized" sites of eHow.com weren't always particularly trustworthy. Sometimes it was because they were just plain... stupid... but we'll admit that most of the time it was because the freelancers wouldn't stay in their lane. Take, for instance, "ACE-certified personal trainer and certified RRCA running coach" Deborah Dunham: she (probably) knew what she was talking about when it came to her areas of specialization, but our cyclists say Deb had no business trying to write, "How to Measure Mountain Bike Frame Sizes."

DIY Tree-Climbing Spikes for Accident-Prone Dummies

commercial tree spikes

In olden days you could watch a utility lineman scamper up a wooden pole as if he (they were always men in those days) were part kitty-cat. Nowadays they all use bucket lifts, and you would be hard-pressed to find a pair of the nifty devices the guys used to get started up the pole; the same handy-dandy tools that (some) loggers still use: tree spikes. If you really wanted a pair, you could probably make your own – but heaven help you if you try to use the directions scribbled down by Ezmeralda Lee in the SportsRec.com post, "How to Make Tree Climbing Spikes."

Mongoose Brakes for the Dummy Cyclist

Mongoose rear brake

Our staffers who specialize in ferreting out bullshit auto-repair posts say that once of the dead giveaways that you're dealing with a clueless freelancer is that the writer thinks that you push the "break petal" to stop a car. No kidding, they see this one fairly regularly. The bike guy thought of them not long ago when he ran across a similar homophone foul-up. Without further ado, let's see what eHow.com's Steve Smith (formerly S. Baselice) has to say in "How to Fix a Mongoose Bike Back Brakes,"¹ now residing at SportsRec.com.

Basic Physics for the Utterly Clueless

Here at the Antisocial Network, we firmly believe that there are some questions that cannot be answered. No, we're not getting all metaphysical, and no, we're not talking about weird jokey questions like, "Do you walk to work or carry your lunch?" In fact, we're thinking of questions that contain so little information that one would need to be omniscient to craft an answer. eHow.com's Kimberly Dyke is most definitely not omniscient, based on her attempt to address "How to Find Speed from Distance and Mass," which now languishes at SportsRec.com for reasons unknown.

Mountain Bike Chain Repairs, the Dummies Approach

rear barrel adjuster

Around ANHQ, we think it's bad enough when a clueless n00b can't figure out how to ask a question, but it's a lot worse when someone who claims knowledge doesn't know enough to answer that question. For some reason, we seem to run across that situation a lot on the niches that used to be eHow.com. Take, for instance, "How to Fix Slipping Gears on a Mountain Bike" on SportsRec.com, tossed up there by one Abby Roberts.

Clicking Bike Chains for Dummies

Rear derailleur barrel adjuster

Here at the Antisocial Network, we certainly do not subscribe to the notion that people of the female persuasion are incapable of mechanical pursuits. That's what our parents and grandparents thought, back when a woman's place was "in the kitchen." We do, however, realize that that sort of attitude has been responsible for a great deal of ignorance among women whose male role models didn't see fit to teach them about things they learned in shop class. One of those things that a LOT of women don't seem to have absorbed is describing sounds. Here's a case where one who claims to have expertise got it wrong: Abby Roberts and her post "How to Fix a Clicking Chain on a Road Bike" at SportsRec.com.

Bicycle Components for Dummies

road bike with flat bar

In the world of bogosity, there are few more bogus "information transfer professionals" than self-styled professional freelancers. This is especially true of the freelancers who wrote for the Demand Media Systems (DMS) family, including eHow.com and LiveStrong.com, dumping out thousands of ill-informed and misinformed posts per week. Among the dross moved to niches by Leaf Group, DMS¹ renamed, is an Erica Leigh post at SportsRec.com, purporting to address the question, "Can I Put Mountain Bike Components on a Road Bike Frame?" (previously housed at LiveStrong).

Quick-Release Skewers for Dummies

The skewer isn't the axle, Frank, this is

As we've mentioned on several occasions, contributors to the former eHow.com were required to "introduce" their topic with 75 to 100 words, a requirement invented by the site's SERP gurus. This often led to some amusing notions written by contributors who had no idea why anyone would do whatever task they were describing. Our search staff are all aware that when you find a ridiculous introduction on a former eHow post, the rest of the content is probably not much better. Witness "How to Change the Wheel Skewers on Bicycle [sic]," a Frank Whittemore production now living at SportsRec.com (originally at eHow client LiveStrong.com).

Schwinn Shifters for Dummy Cyclists

Did Sean really think you should take this apart?

In the era of COVID-19 shutdowns, it seems that darned near every schmuck who ever bought a 200-dollar "mountain" bike at Wal-Mart has pulled it out of the garage and is trying to ride it on the local hike-and-bike trails. Far be it from any of us to argue against exercise, but several of the staff feel that they could get rich off teaching people how to use their gears for a couple of bucks each. Based on what he wrote in "How to Fix a Gear Shifter on a Schwinn" at SportsRec.com, it's a fairly safe bet that Sean Mann would be one of those students, not the teacher.

A Homemade Wakeboard for Dummies

plywood wakeboard assembly

Some of the most cockamamie sets of instructions we've come across in the eHow.com pantheon have been for people trying to explain how to make your own sports equipment (we'll include a brief list below). The reality of sports equipment is that it's rarely easy to make, and the eHowian contributors who pretended to know how rarely had the slightest idea how to do it. To the list of fake DIYers, then, add Brandy Alexander (or so she claims) and her SportsRec.com post, "How to Make a Homemade Wakeboard."

Flunking Photography 101 for Dummies

bicycle stem length

In the days when a lot of people still have dial-up internet, web pages were more likely to be text-rich and have few images. It's no surprise, then, that the early posts at eHow.com (and its subsidiary, LiveStrong.com) had little in the way of graphics. Along about 2015, however, the people at Demand Media (now known as Leaf Group) decided to plaster their content with photos, and found a stable of freelancers willing to take a bunch of pictures for their more... cogent content. Today's DotD is one such photographer, who uses the name Joe Irizarry. For once, the written content of "How to Measure a Road Bike Stem" meets our standards... but Joe's photographs? Not so much.

Bicycle Speedometers for Dummies

Sensor for counting wheel revolutions

The site formerly known as eHow.com, and now known as a whole host of niche sites, is renowned for in AN's office for the lax manner in which its "contributors" were allowed to answer questions. Common sense was never the site's strong suit, a deficiency that was compounded by the large number of writers attempting to educate people on topics they did not themselves understand. Failure of logic was a common problem, and that's why professional journalist William (W. D.) Adkins is back on these pages. This time, he's attempting to explain "How to Calculate MPH for Bikes" at SportsRec.com.

Shifting Shimano for the Dummy Cyclist

Shimano STI shifters

Ah, well: another day, another eHow.com "contributor" who grabbed a wad of semi-related titles and pretended to know enough about the topic to write helpful content. We'd already caught Tammie Painter writing about Shimano Pedals and a Shimano Altus groupset (not to mention bicycle tires), now the former biology student and fantasy writer is back to try to explain "How to Use Shimano Gears" at SportsRec.com. Needless to say, it's no better than her first three bites of the eHow apple.

Elliptical Distance for Dummies

Typical elliptical console

We've noticed many a time over the life of the Antisocial Network that some freelance contributors to the erstwhile eHow.com would happily answer any question, no matter how stupid or how little they happened to know about the topic. The most... interesting? of the posts are those written by clueless freelancers to answer questions that are just plain dumb. Today's DotD nominee checks both boxes: meet Tanya May and the way she addressed "How to Convert Distance to Miles for a Proform Elliptical" for SportsRec.com.