Latitude-Longitude Coordinates; the Dummy Explanation - The Freelance Files MMCCXXX

Lat-long coordinates

Many a self-appointed "professional writer" makes a grave error in venturing out of their natural comfort zone. That is, however, exactly what caused the former eHow.com to become what is arguably the most infamous content farm of its day. Unfortunately, much of the flawed content is still kicking around the 'net, stinking up cyberspace with dumbassery. Offered up for your consideration is today's nominee, biology major Dana Schafer and her half-assed attempt to tell her readers "How to Get Directions Using Coordinates" at Classroom.com.

The Dummies Guide to Amish Barns

Post and beam barn

One of our staffers grew up in an Amish community in northern Indiana, and is pretty well acquainted with "The Plain People." Chances are pretty good that he's seen – and been in – hella more Amish barns than the total dumbass who put fingertips to keyboard and barfed up the post, "How to Build an Amish Barn." For the record, that clueless freelancer is one Rebecca Boardman and her post (originally at eHow.com) is now at the website Classroom.com. Nonetheless, it's still stupid.

Your Own Meditation Chair for Dummies

meditation chair

We run across some remarkably clueless do-it-yourself plans as we wander the back roads of eHow.com – by which we mean the niches into which Leaf Group stuffs posts from the one-time laughingstock of content farms. Some of the worst are those written by freelancers who simply have no idea how to make something with their hands. We've already seen Amma Marfo¹ twice attempting to provide DIY instructions, and she's back for a third time with the Classroom.com post, "How to Build a Meditation Chair."

A Dummies' Signpost Plan

real estate sign post

One of the staffers was rummaging through several hundred suggestion box submissions when she came across a post that combined a newbie nominee, a new website, and a heap of utter bullshit in just 380 words of text. It's been a while since we ran across a freelancer so clueless, but we think you'll enjoy Louise Balle (aka Jade Balle) and her TheClassroom.com post, "How to Make a Real Estate Sign Post." Really...

Tell Us about Landforms, Dummies!

Landforms, Rose, landforms!

Somewhere about the sixth or seventh grade you probably had a science class that taught you all you (thought) you'd ever need to know about geography. Never mind that in one semester or one year, for maybe three or four hours a week; you talked about physical geography, cultural geography, and probably touched on just about every other kind of geography there is. Very likely one of your tests involved memorizing state capitals... If you're like Classroom.com's Rose Guastella, that's probably about where your geography study ended - which is why the liberal arts major had no business pretending to answer the question, "What Are the Five Landform Regions that Make Up the United States?" It's also probably why she did such a lousy job...