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.

Mercator Maps for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCIX

Not a Mercator Map

The younger staffers here at the Antisocial Network tend to be more visual than their older coworkers, probably because they came of age in an era marked by the proliferation of videos and millions of click-bait illustrations. We assume that has something to do with the reason why WiseGEEK.com appends the parenthetical notation "(with pictures)" to so many of their titles... such as "What is a Mercator Map? (with pictures)"  Unfortunately, when a  WiseGEEKian freelancer is ignorant of the topic, an ill-chosen image can be a dead giveaway. That's how a staffer caught up with Archana Khambekar for her post.

The Equator for the Scientifically Dumb

International Date Line

 Ahh, yes, back in the friendly confines of the eHow.com canon (as imagined by Leaf Group's niche team). After a week or so of plumbing the depths of dumbassery at other content farms, we're back to the mother lode of misinformation. In particular, we're at Sciencing.com, where we found prolific freelancer Nikki Saint Bautista attempting to answer the question, "What Is the Equator's Latitude?"

Addresses from Aerial Photos, the Dummies Version

where's the "beginning"?

People type some of the strangest questions into internet search bars. Sometimes it's because they're pure-D stupid people, and sometime it's because they just don't know the right words to put together. That made no difference whatsoever to the bots that collected queries for eHow.com, much less the people who volunteered (for a few bucks) to answer them. Repeat DotD Neal Litherland now returns to pretend to answer the nonsensical query "How to Find a Physical Address by Looking at an Aerial Map" for Sciencing.com.

Triangulation for the Dummy Hiker

triangulation on a topo map

One of our staffers thinks that the somewhat arbitrary structure forced on freelancers at the former eHow.com was responsible for more stupidification of the internet than any other feature of the site. We've seen many occasions when a freelancer who'd put together a simple answer to a question got tripped up by the details necessary to pad the post to meet the minimum word count. Today's nominee is similar, but different: she's media studies student Tatyana Ivanov, and she contributed "How to Triangulate a Position" to GoneOutdoors.com.

Contour Intervals for Dummies, the Rewrite Redux

Some symbols on USGS Topo Maps

Today marks a "quantum leap" in our staff's wanderings through the content of the erstwhile eHow.com: we'd already found content that Leaf Group sent to the "cleanup team."¹ This, however, is the first time that we found a rewrite of a rewrite! A long time ago, serial DotD Soren Bagley attempted to explain "How to Calculate Contour Intervals," a job so... sloppy? clueless? that Soren's prose was overwritten by an attempt by one Karen G. Blaettler.² Guess what: apparently, someone at Leaf Group follows this blog, because Karen's attempt only lasted a little more than a year before they called in Kevin Beck.

They shouldn't have bothered...

Magnetic Compasses for the Dummy Outdoorsman

Magnetic declination rosette

After several years of correcting the utter bull published by ignorant but greedy freelancers, you might think we'd have become inured to the stupidity endemic to the breed. Not so: every day introduces our staffers to even more clueless journalism, history, and English lit students trying to write about the science they've avoided studying. Sometimes we wonder if physics and chemistry students freelanced about writing romance novels and interpreting poetry.¹ Be that as it may, today's nominee is art and history graduate Jeremiah Blanchard, whom we found attempting to explain "How to Calibrate a Magnetic Compass" at GoneOutdoors.com. Unfortunately, he couldn't...

Magnetic Declination Correction, the Dummy Version

setting magnetic declination

Over the years, we've noticed that more than a few freelancers are a little hazy on the basics of using maps and compasses. The concept of map projections and the resulting coordinates is a total black box for most of them, and the worst of them can't even understand directions... the worst, like eHowian Jeremiah Blanchard. The former art and history student shared his ignorance in the GoneOutdoors.com post, "How to Calibrate a Magnetic Compass."

Topographic Maps, the Dummies Rationale

Topographic map example

Among its other weaknesses, primarily the use of ignorant freelancers to "answer" questions on-line, eHow.com also demanded that the site's posts comprise 300 to 500 words of text. Given a writer who knows little or nothing about the topic, this requirement was often a recipe for factual disaster as writers padded their prose with half-understood factoids and out-and-out bogosity. Take, for instance Catherine Steinbauer, who attempted to address the question, "What Is the Importance of Topographic Maps?" for Sciencing.com.

Reading Topographic Maps for Dummies

Topographic map example

It's been a couple of weeks since we looked through our file of potential maps DotDs, which doesn't mean that we haven't forgotten the geographically illiterate freelancers out there. Sometimes we wonder how anyone can get anywhere without a little voice whispering in their ear. Heck, some of these people can get lost with a GPS whispering in their shell-like ear! We don't know whether eHowian Keri Honea would get lost with a road map, but we are pretty sure she shouldn't have written about "How to Read Topographic Maps" for Sciencing.com.

The Compass, a Dummy Explains

Basic compass

The bios required of eHow contributors are often a source of amusement to our staffers, particularly when the content one of them posts gives lie to the claims at the bottom of the page. Most of the time it's someone who claims expertise of a degree but doesn't understand the basics of that same topic. Today's a little different; the nominee today claims to teach college students "how to write and conduct research for various situations"; a claim that doesn't actually make much sense. Whatever the case, Elaine Harper's research skills failed her when it came to the Sciencing.com post "Purpose of a Compass."

Map Scales for Dummies

Different ways to express the same map scale

When it comes to geography, a lot of people seem to think they're experts because they can name the capitals of Slovakia and Belize (Bratislava and Belmopan, respectively). That's only partially true: after all, someone who wants to be an expert in geography needs at least passing familiarity with cartography; the more the better. We don't think eHowian Daniel Pinzow fit that particular bill, at least based on his Sciencing.com post "How to Create a Map Scale."

Geographic Grids for Dummies

Longitude lines

We snicker a lot at the journalism and "communications" grads who believe that they are capable of writing about any topic, no matter how esoteric, because of the superior research skills bestowed by their educations. Ha! We're especially amused by the ones who tackled technical and scientific topics at the erstwhile eHow.com, managing to show their ignorance in just a sentence or two. Take, for example, today's DotD nominee, Tamara Runzel, who took on "What Is the Geographic Grid?"¹ for Sciencing.com.

Decimal Degrees for Dummies

Latitude and longitude ranges

Sometimes a research staffer will read most of the way through a potential DotD candidate and suddenly snort with derision. It happens when one of them discovers that an eHow.com freelancer has managed to do an almost high-quality job of copying, rewording, and pasting an answer; but tripped him- or her-self up somewhere near the end by making a gigantic mistake. That's pretty much what happened when one of them ran across the Sciencing.com post "How to Convert Latitude Degrees to Decimal," penned by one Charlotte Johnson.

Map Coordinates for Dummies (Again)

Longitude convergence

If there's one thing our staff cartographer wishes freelancers had learned in elementary school, it's how latitude and longitude work. It's especially taxing for her to see the geographically illiterate types who think that ten degrees of longitude represents the same distance no matter what your latitude. Says she, "Stupid, stupid, stupid!" Well, today's DotD is one such stupid, geometrically illiterate type: let's see what Grant D. McKenzie has to say in his Sciencing.com post, "How to Convert Latitude & Longtitude Into Feet."

Antipodes for Dummies

four quarters of the globe

Although there's no geographer or cartographer on staff at the Antisocial Network, several of our science-y types have a long history of working with maps. They're the ones who are responsible for lambasting the freelancers who get confused about "State Place Coordinate Systems" and commit other map projection boo-boos. One of them brought a simple little freelance article to the table for today, a post called "How to Calculate Antipode" at Sciencing.com, penned by Bob Barber.

Map Coordinates for Dummies

Common map projection types

There's an ongoing debate among our staffers concerning what everyday concept is the blackest "black box" when it comes to internet freelancers. Some think it's the oil industry, others are pretty convinced that the subject of electricity and electrical systems is the ultimate enigma. Over in the corner, however, one of the Antisocial Network's more curmudgeonly researchers claims it's map projections. Leaf Group's rewrite specialist Kevin Beck and his attempt to explain "How to Convert Northing/Easting Coordinates to Longitude/Latitude" definitely support his argument.

Degrees to Meters for Dummies, the Rewrite

Illustration of Great Circle Distances

More and more these days, the intern assigned to look for dead links is finding that Leaf Group has rolled out an "update" to one of the old eHow.com posts we'd already featured. Sometimes they're good enough to ignore, but way too often the rewrite specialist has done little more than reword the original, mistakes and all, and pad it a little. That was surely the case for Chris Deziel in his attempt to rework the Sciencing.com post, "How to Convert Distances from Degrees to Meters."

Coordinate Conversions for Dummy Cartographers

topographic map

One of the staffers is a map collector. Whether it's AAA state maps, USGS topo maps, gas station city maps, or whole-state gazetteers; she's a fan. As a result, she knows quite a bit more about maps than the average bear; so when she runs across utter bullshit about maps she's in a hurry to point it out. The other day, our map fan turned up a Leaf Group rewrite special that, to be charitable, was moronic. Meet Lisa Maloney and her ill-considered attempt to rewrite the Sciencing.com post, "How to Convert Eastings and Northings."

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.