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).

New Outlets for the Dummy DIY Electrician

outlet wires and terminal colors

Sometimes we wonder whether the freelancers who wrote the how-tos and misinformation to which  we award the DotD were aware of just how bogus their posts were. You'd like to think that everyone was innocently passing along bullshit like so many social media users retweeting the output of Russian bots. You'd like to, but it's a safe bet that some of them knew full well that they were over their heads... and soldiered on, anyway.

We'll never know which category Billy Brainard fell into, but that doesn't matter: he's still getting today's award for his Hunker.com post, "How to Add a Receptacle From a Junction Box."

Refrigerator Wattage for Dummies

current measurement with ammeter

We're well aware that the average person knows little more about electricity than, "This is a plug. That is a switch." While that's not optimal, at least it isn't (generally) dangerous stupidity – just garden-variety ignorance. And while we're on the topic of garden-variety ignorance, we'd like to introduce you to returning DotD David Robinson (not the former US Navy and San Antonio Spurs center). Robinson's lack of... common sense? was evident as he pounded out yet another eHow.com post back in 2013. We checked out his answer to, "How to Check the Wattage of a Refrigerator" at SFGate.com... and found it lacking.

GFCI Breakers for Dummies

"Replace" the wiring, Jonra???

A not surprising number of the freelancers who pounded out "how-to" posts for the website eHow.com did little more than google the topic and reword whatever they found. Some of them completely blew it; others got it – most of it, anyway – right enough for what's known as "government work." The problem was that, unless a reader knew enough about the topic to see the screw-ups, the advice could be a little... off. "Off, like a couple of the steps in "How to Install a 20 Amp Gfci [sic] Circuit Breaker," written by Jonra Springs and now niched at the website HomeSteady.com by Leaf Group.

RCA Plugs for Dummies

typical speaker wire

The staffers here at the Antisocial Network long ago realized that one of the surest identifiers of a potential nominee is a certain level of bullshit in their writing. Many a repeat DotD has been caught pretending expertise based on his or her ability to reword something written by people who may (or may not) actually know what they're talking about. Today's nominee is such a case, that of Nichole Liandi and her Techwalla.com post, "How to Solder RCA Connectors."

Light Socket Repair for Dummies

This is a light socket, Tony

One of the greatest failings of eHow.com – besides the obvious fallacy of their allowing "communications" and English Lit grads to write about fluid dynamics or remodeling garages – was allowing those contributors to decide for themselves what anonymous web-searchers meant by the phrases they typed into Google. Worse, the site's "checkers" (the vaunted content editors) rarely, if ever, disagreed with the contributors. Consequently, a lot of dreck made it onto the site. We're talking about stuff like "How to Fix a Broken Light Socket," an Anthony Smith post that now lives at HomeSteady.com.

Wire Identification for DIY Dummies

Neutral wire recoded as hot

Another day, another trip through the back list of posts for our latest intern, and the one turned up a doozy... It seems that the fine folks at Leaf Group agreed with our staff that one of their older posts  one of  heir older posts was no longer acceptable. Unfortunately, they merely assigned a "cleanup team" member to perform a rewrite. The problem? This version's only a little better than the original. That's why the staffers have nominated Shelley Frost to be our DotD, based on her attempt to rewrite "How to Identify Hot & Neutral Electrical Wiring" for Leaf's niche site Hunker.com. Sadly, the original has been "reviewed" by one Jeff Volz, self-described as a "licensed electrician," without significant changes...

Outlets in Cabinets for Dummies

recessed medicine cabinet

A lot of strange things happen when amateurs attempt to remodel their homes. Some of the ideas people come up with are, to be blunt, rather weird (we were going to say "stupid," but stupid is in the eye of the beholder). The weird idea for today is that someone Googled (or Binged, whatever) "How to Install an Outlet Inside a Medicine Cabinet." The concept alone would be bad enough, but then Cameron Easey went out and attempted to answer the poor schmuck for eHow.com.

Portable Power for the Clueless

portable generator in use

We have to believe that at least some of the freelancers who regularly copied, reworded, and pasted information at the old eHow.com thought they were being useful in some small way. We know that our staffers who spent some time there tried to be good servants, only tackling "titles" in areas where they had knowledge or expertise. Others, sadly, were not so honest. We're talking here about the likes of Misty Faucheux, who leveraged all that knowledge she gulped down while picking up her BA in Communications to slap together "Kawasaki GE2900 Generator Specifications" for ehow.com, now languishing at HomeSteady.com.

Ceiling Fan Installation for Dummies

Ceiling fan bracket

Sometimes the Antisocial Network selection team must read a potential nominee quite carefully to find the dumbassery necessary to make the case. Other times it's like being slapped in the face with a wet fish. Serial DotD Marissa Wilson wrote dozens of posts at eHow.com back in the day, many she wrote that were ostensibly about health are long gone. We're most concerned about the ones that remain, however, in particular those that deal with DIY topics and home repair... posts like "How to Install a Ceiling Fan in a Manufactured Home" at HomeSteady.com.

Light Bulbs for Dummies

Our staffers report that every once in a great while, they learn something new from the posts they page through while looking for nominees. When that happens, it's rare for the post to qualify for the DotD award despite the new information but it does happen sometimes. That's what happened today, if truth be told: one of our staffers picked up some new information from Jared Lewis and his HomeSteady.com post, "What Would Make a New Light Bulb Keep Blowing Out in a Kitchen Exhaust Fan?" In reality, he learned it indirectly: Lewis cited a website that contained accurate information... but his post didn't.

Electrical Switches for Dummies

simple electrical circuit

We've noted, to our continuing dismay, that many less technologically savvy freelancers are not shy about attempting to discuss science and technology in their content. Nowhere, in our experience anyway, is this more likely than among the many contributors to eHow.com who left school with literature and "communications" degrees. You can identify their work by their omission of or mangling of the more "science-y" terminology. Heck sometimes they even mangle the simple stuff. Take, for example, the facts that eHowian Jacquelyn Jeanty muffed on her Hunker.com post, "How Does an Electrical Switch Work?"

Appliance Circuits for the Dummy Electrician

Electric circuit overload

Few freelance sins will raise the hackles of the AN's safety guru that some halfwit handing out dangerous — or even semi-dangerous — advice under the guise of DIY answers. We often point out that the sensible consumer is no more likely to ask a dentist how to perform a brake job on their car than they are to ask their mechanic to fill a cavity in a tooth. So why would anyone think that a retired newspaper reporter knows enough about electrical work to answer the question, "Can I Put a Dishwasher, Microwave and Refrigerator on the Same Circuit?" Yet that's exactly what Herb Kirchoff tried to do at HomeSteady.com.

Garage Door Remote Conversion for Dummies

Opener motor wiring

We make fun here almost constantly of people trying to explain how to do something they themselves have never done, which we're pretty certain was the business model of eHow.com. That website's format demanded a short introduction before launching into "instructions," which is where the first evidence of cluelessness often appears. Few offenders, however, have been as uniformed about their topic as repeat DotD Greyson Ferguson, a film student whose ignorance of things DIY apparently knew no bounds. That's quite evident in his HomeSteady.com post, "How do I Install a Genie Conversion?"¹

Light Switches for Dummies

various light switches

We see some rather strange "questions" as we patrol the internet, and – more to the point – we see some even stranger freelance attempts to answer those questions. Most of the time the strangeness is a result of the freelancer's lack of familiarity with the topic. Sometimes it's more prosaic: the freelancer (sort of) understands the subject, but just doesn't get the question. We think that's what happened when Elizabeth McGrath pumped out the About.com post, "Tips for Identifying Light Switches in Your Home," now niched at TheSpruce.com.

Transformer Impedance for Dummies

Transformer resistance test

Weird: just yesterday we ran across a freelancer with a degree in earth science who didn't know basic geology. At the time, we said, "Few freelancers draw as much scorn from the Antisocial Network staffers as the ones who claim to have an educational background for their topic yet totally blow it when they start writing." Well, today's nominee is only a little different: they're Blake Flournoy, who wrote in a different Leaf Group bio that, "[T]hey made a name for themselves repairing appliances..." Based on what they wrote in the Sciencing.com post "How to Use an Ohmmeter to Test an AC Transformer," though, they didn't learn anything about transformers.

Power Cords, Milliamps, and Current: the Dummy Version

200mA power supply

There's a special brand of cluelessness that almost never fails to draw the ire of a certain one of our staffers; and that's some freelancer mangling the basics of electricity. If, however, you were to take a brief stroll down a certain list of topics "covered" by our DotDs, you might find that quite a few people have managed to get that staffer's dander up. To that list of dummies, we add one more today: she's eHowian Jennifer Kimrey, and her HomeSteady.com post is titled "What Is the Difference Between 200 Ma [sic] & 300 Ma [sic] on a Power Cord?"

Slowing a Box Fan, the Dummy Version

lamp dimmer switch

Our staffers never cease to be amazed (and occasionally amused) by some of the brainless notions that the contributors to eHow managed to get published – worse yet, that they managed to get paid for! Every day we see more doofus ideas, some of which are downright dangerous. Few categories are the source of more ridiculous ideas than DIY electrical work. Feast your eyes on the ridiculosity that William Kinsey managed to get up on HomeSteady.com that purports to explain, "How to Slow Down a Box Fan."

Power Cords for the Dummy DIYer

Two prongs, two wires!

The business model of ye olde eHow.com was fairly simple: the site scraped internet searches, filtered out all the ones like "Natalie Portman nude," and let a stable of contributors answer any "how-to" and "what-is" questions that remained. Some of the questions, to be honest, were pretty stupid. What's even stupider, though, is that many a J-school grad went ahead and "answered" the stupid ones anyway... anything for a buck, we guess. That's apparently why Kimberley Johnson posted "How to Replace a Two-Prong Power Cord With a Three-Prong," now available at HomeSteady.com.

Extension Cord Capacity for Dummies

Typical extension cord amperage chart

One of the staffers remembers a lesson she learned about extension cords: she and Daddy were building a fence using a framing nailer, and had set the compressor in the back yard. She'd connected a couple of extension cords and dragged them out in the back yard, but the compressor kept stalling. Daddy explained that she had almost 100 feet of light-gauge extension cord, and it just wasn't supplying enough amperage to power the compressor. Too bad eHow.com's Mary Lougee hadn't learned the same lesson before penning "How to Determine If an Extension Cord Can Handle a Load"¹ for Homesteady.com.