Rattling Windows for Dummies

Double-hung sash window

One of the few areas of agreement between the Antisocial Network staffers and the people at content farms like HubPages and eHow is a shared dislike for plagiarism. They don't like it because it reduces SERP, we don't like it because it's intellectually lazy and dishonest. Different strokes, we guess... Whatever the reason, though, we especially dislike plagiarism when the miscreant introduces inaccuracies while trying to reword the original, sort of like how Alec Preble messed up in plagiarizing "How to Fix Rattling Windows"¹ for TheBump.com (a Leaf Group niche).

Bicycle Storage for Dummies

bicycle hydraulic disc brake

It should come as no surprise that the biggest problem we've noticed with freelancers answering random questions (the good old eHow model) is that too many times the person answering the question knows no more about the topic than the person answering it. Our house bike guru caught one of these just recently: self-styled fitness professional Elle Di Jensen, who we often find writing about bicycles, tried to answer the question "Is it Bad to Hang a Bicycle by Its Wheel?"¹ for, of all places, Leaf Group's TheBump.com (bicycle "advice" on a pregnancy website???)

Shortening a Table for Dummies

wobbly table

Self-appointed freelance "experts": you gotta love 'em, especially the ones who claim to be "award-winning." You always wonder, what awards have these people won? the award of having mommy put your latest artwork up in the Amana Gallery when you were seven, perhaps? Whatever the case, we try to never fall for the self-hype. such as that claimed by "award-winning designer" Gina Samarotto (who's also a freelance journalist? and has time to win design awards? s-u-u-ure...) when she attempted to impress people with her design skills in "How to Lower the Height of a Table"¹ for Leaf Group's TheBump.com.

Refinishing Oak, the Way of the Dummy

Unfilled oak grain (left) vs. filled (right)

If your home was built anytime between about 1970 and 2010, chances are pretty good that at least some of the cabinetry is oak, probably with a medium finish. Besides being fairly unattractive, the style is quite dated, so many a would-be DIY redecorator wants to take brush in hand and repaint those suckers. Good on ya, folks! The problem, of course, is that painting oak isn't as simple as painting pine, so who you gonna ask? the internet, of course! With luck, you won't run into Matt Smolsky trying to explain the procedure at TheBump.com (a Leaf Group site, formerly Demand Media) in "The Best Way to Paint Oak Cabinets."¹

Siphons for Dummies

Siphoning a waterbed

Remember waist-length hair (on guys), paisley-print shirts and bell-bottom jeans? Yeah? Well, you're either a throwback millennial or someone who survived the sixties – either way, you probably have (or had) a waterbed. The two biggest problems with a waterbed are filling and emptying the thing, so it makes some sense that someone might come to the internet to learn how. We'd rather, however, that someone who knows how to empty a waterbed would answer them, as opposed to junk like "Siphoning a Waterbed"¹ at TheBump.com, posted by Alec Preble.

Because he has to (it was required at eHow.com before it was moved to TheBump), Alec explains that