Ignition Coils for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXXXII

Remember that old (and oft rebooted) game show, "Name That Tune"? Sure you do: contestants would attempt to identify a popular song in fewer notes than their competitors (and variations on that theme). Well, our staffers like to play a similar game: identify a freelancin' dumbass in as few words as possible.  One of 'em got lucky with today's nominee, since it only took nine words for her to realize that Darla Ferrara had no idea what she was talking about when she tried to tell people "How to Test Coil Wire" for ItStillRuns.com. 

Steering Scooters for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXIX

Countersteering a motorcycle

We don't know how many times we've said it here (not to mention in real life), but this statement bears near-constant repeating: "If you want information, you ask the person who knows the facts." As we've suggested in the past, you don't ask a plumber for advice about medical problems, and you don't ask an MD how to cut a mortise  and tenon joint. Almost never, anyway... With that in mind, we hereby present Nida Rasheed and her half-witted attempt to explain "Turning Tips for Motor Scooters" for ItStillRuns.com. That Rasheed is unfamiliar with the physics of single-track vehicles is... well, obvious.

OBD for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXVIII

OBD2 Scanner

The most irritating (at least to us here at AN) self-appointed "freelance journalists" of the web are those who have somehow convinced themselves that they can reword any text about any topic and still make sense. On second thought, they're he second most irritating: the worst are the ones who know they can't but are too greedy to stop. One among that group is the DifferenceBetween.net denizen Mabelle, one of many incompetents on that particular site. This time out, we're calling "her" out for the post, "Difference Between OBD1 and OBD2."

Fog Lights for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXX

headlight beam pattern comparison

Many of the self-described "professional writers" who pounded out content for eHow.com operated by the principle that as long as they could get their verbiage past the company's gatekeepers – the content editors – it must be good enough for publication. Once they realized that the content editors knew just as little about the topics as they did, the writers found themselves free to write even the most ridiculous statements, as long as they were (more or less) grammatically correct and met the website's style guidelines. That's how the kind of bogosity sprinkled throughout "Purpose of Fog Lights,"¹ a Heather Broeker post now living at ItStillRuns.com, managed to contribute to the stupidification of the internet.

Dodge OBD Codes for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXVII

OBD-II code

Few aphorisms in life seem to be more accurate than the adage, "Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer." The fine folks at eHow.com, unfortunately, made this worse by paying people to submit stupid answers even if the question is unanswerable. A case in point is "How to Pull Codes on a 2007 Dodge for the Check Engine Light" at ItStillRuns.com, which "professional journalist" Abby Vaun thought she had answered. We submit, however, that Abby had not and, in the process, lied about the source of her information.

Generator Tests for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCX

Say, Danielle, where's the generator?

When we run across content generated by the "cleanup crew" in an eHow.com niche site, we often wonder just how bad the original had to have been for Leaf Group to pay someone to perform one of those fabulous rewrites. It's especially true of content that might be construed to be somewhat technical but has been sent to, say, a graduate of a small history department for a touchup. Well, that's what happened today, anyway: rewrite specialist Danielle Smyth jumped on a post purporting to explain "How to Test a Tractor Generator," which can be found languishing at HomeSteady.com (a previous version lived at ItStillRuns.com for a while, but it was born at eHow).

Speedometer Calibration for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMLXXV

Speedometer calibration

We don't know about everyone else, but around the Antisocial Network we're pretty much unanimous in our opinion that, when you have a how-to question, you're better off asking someone who knows more than you for advice. We mean, really: do you ask someone who's never been in a helicopter how to fly one? Of course not... which makes us wonder why someone who wants to know "How to Calibrate a Harley Speedometer" would bother reading the advice of Artesia Peluso at ItStillRuns.com.

Varnish in Your Gas Tank for Dummies

Varnish in carburetor

The nice people who ran the website eHow.com decided at one point that all their "contributors" (as they termed the freelance hacks who submitted their rubbish) needed to provide biographical information. Supposedly, this was so readers would recognize expertise; but in reality it revealed that many of the people writing about hard science and construction had BFAs in creative writing or BAs in journalism. Still, those bios can be amusing, as in the one provided by Kayar Sprang (real name probably K. R. something): that one crowed that she "specializes in subjects she has expertise in"; a claim that, based on the ItStillRuns.com post "How to Clean Out Varnish in a Gas Tank," was a bald-faced lie.

Cylinder Heads for Dummies

 

sample cylinder head configuration

Over the years we've learned that one of the quickest ways to identify the freelancers who are utterly clueless about their topics is the truly stupid misuse of terminology that would be easily recognizable to anyone familiar with the topic. A good example would be the creative writing graduate who tries to tell you how to replace the "break shoes" on your "disk breaks"... although we've come to learn that a lot of people seem to make that particular mistake. Nevertheless, we caught today's nominee is just such a faux pas: he's first-time DotD Jeremy Laukkonen, whom we caught trying to explain "What is a Cylinder Head?" for WiseGEEK niche site WikiMotors.com.

Tiburon Timing Belts for Dummies

Tiburon timing belt routing

It is sometimes instructive to wander through the archived versions of eHow.com posts to see if anyone has commented on the content (in other words, beat us to the punch). Every once in a while we find evidence that other people are thoroughly disgusted by the rubbish some of their freelancers published either out of ignorance or avarice – and perhaps both. Today, we visit a post written by prolific eHowian Abby Vaun that now sits at the niche site ItStillRuns.com. Like so many of the posts at that site, we suspect that anyone ignorant enough to follow the instructions in "How to Replace the Timing Belt on a 2003 Hyundai Tiburon" would soon find that their car did not "still run."

Auto Repair by and for Dummies

Harmonic balancer, small-block Chevy

More than a few of the drones who wrote for... errr, "contributed to" eHow.com were prone to the MSU¹ method of answering the questions as they pretended to be experts. One giveaway for this syndrome is the citation of obscure print books as references instead of linking to something online that a curious (or suspicious) reader could verify. In part, that's why one of our staffers flagged multiple DotD winner "Alibaster Smith"²  for his attempt to tell people "How to Troubleshoot a Harmonic Balancer," which can now be found at ItStillRuns.com.

Oil Pressure Switches for Dummies

Oil Pressure Light

Our staffers don't get over to Leaf Group's ItStillRuns.com very much unless they're following the trail of clueless freelancers who ply – or, more correctly, plied – their trade at eHow.com, which is where all the content at ISR came from in the first place. So it should come as no surprise that one of the kids turned up a new post by long-since forgotten contributor Marcus Baker at that particular niche, in which a DotD we hadn't thought about for four years suddenly reappearsed, failing to answer some poor schmuck's question: "Will an Oil Pressure Switch Cause a Car to Not Start?"

Service Engine Soon for Dummies

Check Engine Light

In case you never noticed, every modern (that is, post about 1985) vehicle on the road now has a warning light on the dashboard. Many, if not most, are an icon of an engine printed with the words "check engine soon" or "service engine soon." If the light comes on while you're driving, it means that an onboard sensor network has determined that something is out of whack. It's not possible to determine what's wrong without a device called an OBD-II code reader. All that seems to have been lost on eHow.com's Darla Himeles, whose "What Does Service Engine Soon Mean?" just nibbled around the edges.

Valve Lifters for Dummies

Valve lifter types

The staffer assigned to check the Antisocial Network's back catalog for dead links brought her first nominee to the staff meeting a few days back. It seems she'd been looking for a Hunker post about hydraulic valve lifters (why it was at Hunker is unknown) and found it gone. Leaf Group, however, had kindly redirected the link to a post by one Cayden Conor at ItStillRuns.com. The staffer recognized the name, and also recognized that Conor (writing then under the name Cheryl Bowman) was every bit as unprepared to answer the question at hand, "How Do Car Engine Lifters Work?"

Tubeless Tires for Dummies

anatomy of a tubeless tire

Every day some unlucky staffer — usually the one who loses a rock-paper-scissors-lizard-Spock tournament — is assigned to check a couple dozen entries in this blog to see whether the nominee is still live on the Web and to find a copy in archive.org if it isn't. Not long ago, the poor intern (it's usually an intern for some reason) ran across a post pretending to explain how to patch a tubeless tire on a wheelbarrow. For the most part, we objected to the eHow contributor's inability to craft coherent instructions, though we noted that she did manage to mention seating the tire bead in the wheel. Well, that post is gone, and the link redirects to what is arguably an even worse set of instructions for tubeless tires. It's "How to Inflate a Flat Tubeless Tire on a Riding Lawn Mower," written by Elizabeth Knoll in the days she called herself Robin Gonyo, and now residing at GardenGuides.com.

Valve Seal Troubleshooting for Dummies

Valve stem seal

If you're reading this in 2020, you may be familiar with the pickup truck commercial highlighting a "jaw-dropping" feature of the product, but an optional tailgate is not the only thing that can cause our staffers' jaws to hit their chests. No, abject stupidity from some freelancer often does the trick. Let's have a look at the latest such dumbassery, a post at Leaf Group niche site ItStillRuns.com written by Tyler Ellington for eHow.com in 2011. The content supposedly tells readers, "How to Stop Engine Valve Seals From Leaking."

Front-Wheel Drive for Automotive Dummies

CV joints in FWD system

Our staffers tell us – heck, they'll tell anyone – that you always know when freelancers are writing outside their comfort zone because they stop mentioning specifics and concentrate on vague generalities. Well, at least the ones who don't just forge ahead and make a complete mess of the specifics. Anyway, we see a lot of that when people without the necessary background start trying to write about anything the technologically non-savvy consider a "black box." You know, topics like, "Front-Wheel-Drive Transmission Problems"? As approached on ItStillRuns.com by Jacquelyn Jeanty?

Changing Wiper Blades, the Dummies Version

Typical wiper blade installation with J hook

Our older staffers have been known to lament the difficulty of performing one's own maintenance on modern cars. In olden days, you could change the oil and filter, plugs and points, and air filter all by your lonesome on a summer afternoon. Nowadays you have to be double-jointed to get the oil filter off, and in some cars have to damned near pull the engine to get to one of the spark plugs. You can, however, still change windshield wipers... unless you're as Clueless as Heath Wright appears to be, based on his ItStillRuns.com post, "How to Replace Rear Wiper Blades."

Water Pump Troubleshooting for Dummies

This water pump is shot!

When you stop and think about it, our two possessions that are most costly most people own – and maintain – are a house and a vehicle. That high cost of maintenance is probably what drives some owners to think they should at least try to fix a problem with the car (or truck) before handing it over to their local millionaire mechanic. eHow.com knew that, so they were perfectly happy to let their contributors write how-to for would-be mechanics... even if those contributors were, themselves, ignorant. You know, like Jennifer Patterson, who tried to explain "How to Check to See If Water Pump Is Bad" for ItStillRuns.com.

Mower Tires for Dummies

A Huskee mower: where's the spare tire, John?

We wouldn't swear to it, but we suspect that no one who contributes to the stupidification of the internet irks our staff more than the freelancer who claims expertise or "specialization" in a topic and then goes on to butcher it. Today's DotD nominee is a guy who claims to have decades as a professional writer who "specializes in auto repair" under his belt. Unfortunately, that vast experience doesn't seem to have been much help to eHow.com's John Rose when he tried to tell his readers "How to Change the Tire on a Huskee Lawn Mower."