Major Landforms for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLVI

Most agree mountains are a major landform

We suspect that they never thought so, but in our opinion one of the major flaws of the eHow.com business model was an inability to understand the sources of all those questions their stable of freelancers (allegedly) answered. Take the question, "What Are the Seven Major Landforms?" that nominee Andrea Askins glommed onto back in 2011 for AZCentral.com: it's fairly obvious that some middle-schooler was trying to answer a question about a specific region, such as "What are the seven major landforms in North America?" We say that because no authoritative source lists seven major landforms, only four (mountain, plain, plateau, hill). Askins got those, but she had to stretch the definition of "landform" beyond the breaking point to get the other three...

10-Speed Bikes for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLVI

Click this backward, Nicole???

When it comes to "instructions" for a task, it's pretty obvious that writers are "talking through their hats" when you see them spending more page space on peripherally-related topics than on the actual instructions. For example, if you ask someone how to change a spark plug and they spend half of their "answer" telling you about how Henry Ford's Model T line changed manufacturing... Well, that's what caught our collective eye with today's nominee, one Nicole Vulcan and her azCentral.com post, "How to Ride a 10 Speed Bicycle."

Bicycle Shifting for Dummies

Which way is "upward," Nicole?

You'd think that a "lifelong athlete" and a wannabe personal trainer would know better... Wait, you haven't read the rubbish that brought on that observation yet, have you!? Well, take a look: it's "How to Change Gears on a 10-Speed Bicycle," which eHowian Nicole Vulcan published at azCentral.com. To say that Nicole didn't do a good job is being kind, and we aren't inclined to be kind to people who write, for money, about stuff when they know nothing about it. Hell, they might as well be politicians.

The Canadian Shield for Dummies

Canadian Shield, in red

The central idea behind Demand Media's eHow.com site was basically this: people are looking for information, so let's give it to them. Never mind that DMS¹ generally ended up paying out-of-work journalism grads and English majors to answer those questions, regardless of their knowledge... Some of the questions, since they were scraped from internet search engines, were ambiguous at best and nonsensical at worst; still eHow.com contributors "answered" them – like Brooke Ashley pretended to tell someone "What Are the Bodies of Water In the Canadian Shield?" at azCentral.com.

Sending Cash for Dummies

FedEx envelope full of cash

Our staffers are amazed some times at the apparent lack of critical thinking displayed by our DotD nominees. Take, for instance, the bozo who went into great detail about SNAP and AFDC when asked to define a "welfare check" instead of thinking about having the beat cop check on Grandpa 'cause he isn't answering the landline. Well, they found another self-appointed freelancer who can't seem to think. This time, it's Patrick Hutchison trying to tell people "How to Send Money to a Hotel" for azCentral.com.

Virus Safety, the Stupid Version

Viruses vs. bacteria

A physician of our acquaintance (the daughter-in-law of a staffer) bemoans the proliferation of "antibacterial" products. With just a few exceptions, she won't allow them in her home because she knows that overuse of the products is likely to evolve ever more resistant strains of bacteria. She, like us at the Antisocial Network, was absolutely flabbergasted at the ignorance she encountered when she read the article "How to Kill Viruses" that Melanie Fleury posted to azCentral.com (a niche site of eHow... are you not surprised?)

Gas Leaks for Dummies

We'd like to think that when it comes to basic safety and security, freelancers out there will get the information right. They'll check their sources, learn from experts, and make certain that they understand the subject before they commit words to paper. On the other hand, there are all those journalists who were taught in J-school that they can speak with authority about anything... something like the mess Brock Cooper made at azCentral.com when he published "What Are the Causes of Gas Leaks?"¹

About Topographic Maps for Dummies

topographic map

The people who populated the old eHow.com website (a form of it still exists, but most of its content has been dispersed to niche sites) demonstrated startlingly little in the way of common sense. We're not talking specifically about freelancing contributors here, we're talking about the ones who scraped "titles" off the search engines. Of course, greedy freelancers proved more than equal to pretending to address those titles, which is how Henri Bauholz (nee Hank Nielsen) ended up butchering "The Disadvantages of Topographic Maps" for azCentral.com.

Insurance Deductibles for Dummies

Insurance explanation of benefits: note the circled phrase.

One of our warmer, fuzzier staffers has been known to say that there are no stupid questions, but even she was taken aback by the utterly ridiculous question expressed by someone in today's nominee. Although we tend to give credit where credit is due, there is no way we (without access to NSA records) could find out who originally asked "How to Meet a Health Insurance Deductible." On the other hand, we do know that Kendra Dahlstrom tried to answer it for AZCentral.com. That's one of the sites that bought content from Demand Media, which is why the post showed up in a site:eHow search...

Elliptical Resistance for Dummy Exercise

Elliptical Machine Magnet Location

Maintaining a healthy lifestyle is one of the top priorities here at the Antisocial Network, so management recently upgraded the office gym by buying a NordicTrack® elliptical machine for the staffers to use. For the record, it's the Elite 13.1 (model 24055.0), which they admit they bought at Sears. Besides weighing enough that the boss had to bribe a couple of weightlifters to move the box into place, the darned thing's resistance came from the factory set at "NINJA"! In hopes of getting help, we contacted NordicTrack customer support, which appears to have been farmed out to Comcast. The next step was to google the problem, which is where we found eHowian Beth Rifkin stinking up the web with "How to Adjust the Magnet on an Elliptical Machine" at AZCentral.com (content supplied by Demand Media).