Bicycle Storage for Dummies, Revisited - The Freelance Files MMCCXXXVIII

Is that an "S"? [hint: no]

On a semi-regular basis we have one of our interns check the titles we've called out in the past, looking for dead links (they're identified by bold red print in our sorted lists, such as by site). When one shows up, the intern usually searches for the same article title to see if the text has mysteriously migrated to another location. Just a few days ago, the intern found that the title "Is It Bad to Hang a Bicycle by Its Wheel?" – one already so poorly addressed by "Elle di Jensen" that it has disappeared – was also addressed by Charles Webb (sometimes known as Erin Webb?) for Leaf Group's LiveStrong.com site. Whatever Webb's real name, their chops as "website/marketing guru" or perhaps "BA in journalism" clearly did not include cycling experience.

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."

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.

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).

Road Bike or Tri Bike for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXXV

Triathlon bike

It's been instructive to wander the pages of the DifferenceBetween twins (.net and .com; apparently fraternal instead of identical) while searching for DotD nominations. Truth be told, so much of the content is bogus that it's difficult to decide which one to feature. The chief problem both sites have is that any real difference can usually be discussed in a sentence or two, but that amount of verbiage wouldn't create enough page space to fit in all the ads. Thus, their contributors were forced to pad out their explanations, a practice fraught with bullshit when the writer doesn't understand the topic... which is all too often the case. Take admin¹ at DifferenceBetween.com, here caught attempting to explain the "Difference Between Road Bike and Triathlon Bike."

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 Maintenance for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXLII

Construction of a bicycle chain

It's no longer surprising to our staffers that the old adage, "Ask a stupid question, get a stupid answer" has never been truer than in the age of internet content farms. Really: if you're not familiar enough with a mechanical or technological problem to ask a cogent, on-point question; you sure as heck shouldn't expect some self-appointed generalist with an English Lit degree to both understand your question and answer it. Capisce? Well, some poor schmuck asked DoItYourself.com "How to Repair Squeaky Bike Tires," and one of their English grads, Nora Zavalczki, pretended to answer it. Nora's ignorance of all things bicycle, however, was pretty obvious.

Changing Bike Tires for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXVIII

flat bicycle tire

The universe of online freelancers apparently shares a critical attribute with the world of job seekers: resumé inflation, We've long since lost count of the "communications" grads who claim they're experts at home improvement but don't know a hawk from a handsaw. To that number, we add people who claim to be experienced bike mechanics or even garden-variety cycling enthusiasts, but don't seem to know a seat post from a chain ring. We're thinking today of WiseGEEK.com contributor Malcolm Tatum, who claims an "interest [in] cycling," although his bona fides seem pretty weak in his  SportsnHobbies.com post, "How do I Change a Bicycle Tire? (with pictures)."

Bicycle Pumps for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXI

Different tire pumps

We find the capsule biographies of content-farm freelancer so be most instructive, especially when the author in question claims to be an expert or an enthusiast in a given topic. Take, for instance, today's nominee, WiseGEEK.com writer Malcolm Tatum. In his bio, Tatum allowed that "his interests include... cycling." That caught the eye of the house cyclist, who decided to search his WiseGEEK oeuvre for cycling-related content. Sure enough, up popped "What is a Bicycle Pump?" at an all-new wiseGEEK niche, WikiMotors.com. According to our staffer, about the only dumber answer to that question would probably involve women's shoes...

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.

Bike Computer Setup for Dummies

Sensor position

We realize that now's not the time to be thinking of hopping on your bicycle and cruising the local streets/trails/whatever... but we can dream. That brought our staffers together to look at some of our collection of potential DotD nominees in the world of self-powered two-wheelers. Sure enough, we came across a post by someone whose eHow.com bio claims that he was once a "contributing writer for Bicycling Magazine." It is, of course, a claim that can't be verified; but if true, based on what Wade Shaddy wrote in the GoneOutdoors.com post "How to Set Up a Bicycle Computer," he wasn't writing about maintenance... at least not maintenance in this century.

Bicycle Safety for Dummies

bike path marking

 One of the larger problems of the content farms that flourished before Google slapped 'em upside the head with the Panda II update was that more than a few of the self-appointed freelance journalists thought nothing of "writing" a post by performing a cut-reword-paste job on something they'd read somewhere else. Obviously, they'd be nailed for plagiarism without the rewording step, but they often lacked sufficient knowledge of their subject to realize when amokking in a thesaurus introduced problematic content. That, we suspect, is what happened when Terry Hurley tried to share a few "Bicycle Safety Tips" with everyone at LoveToKnow.com.

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).

Tire Changes for the Dummy Cyclist

Bicycle tire lever

One of the staff's more... "experienced" cyclists claims to have repaired at least a hundred flats on bicycles over the years (he rides 5,000 miles a year on streets that seem paved with glass, so that's quite possible). He claims that he can flip a bike, pull off the wheel, and swap out the tube in under five minutes. Pumping that sucker back up can take a little more time. Whatever the case, he was NOT amused by the slap-dash job Jonathan Croswell did when attempting to explain "Easy Ways to Remove Bicycle Tires From Rims" at LiveStrong.com.

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.

Shifter Replacement for the Dummy Cyclist

Road bike integrated shifter

It's occasionally, albeit rarely, amusing to see what a mess some internet freelancers make out of DIY instructions when they've obviously never DIT (Done It Themselves). They omit steps, skip over critical procedures, mangle terminology, and – in general – get it just plain wrong. Today's nominee is one such freelancer, a guy who wrote for LiveStrong.com on the basis of (we guess) his BA in "liberal arts." It's for damn sure Ryan Tubbs isn't a bike mechanic, at least based on the rubbish he posted in "How to Replace the Gear Shifter on a Bicycle."

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.

Shimano Drivetrains for Dummies

standard vs compact crank

After more than six years of paging through the multitudinous sins of freelancers at places like HubPages and eHow, we've become inured to the "stupidification" some of those miscreants visit on the internet as a consequence of their ignorance. We have a special antipathy, however for the writers who claim to know better and still muck things up. One such is "former contributing editor to Bicycling" Wade Shaddy, who we found mucking around at GoneOutdoors.com with a little ditty called, "Types of Shimano Gears."

Brakes for Dummy Bicycle Mechanics

brake cable housing (blue)

We freely admit to being purists here at the Antisocial Network, which (for the most part) means that we would prefer that people who know what they're talking about give us the information we need. That pretty much precludes some college English major writing "instructions" for bicycle maintenance without some sort of background as a bike mechanic, even if it's only DIY. When Daniel Barrows chose to bullshit about "How to Install Bicycle Brakes" for LiveStrong.com, he irked our house cycling specialists...