PVC Gazebo Plans for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCL

Should've stuck with a canopy, Jane

 Let's say you actually did want to build a gazebo out of PVC pipe: either you'd already be fairly familiar with using PVC or you would need a lot of help. Help? you know, information on how PVC fittings work and how to choose the correct fittings; information about the structural strength of PVC; tips on the size of the PVC pipes needed to build a sturdy structure that wouldn't look spindly... You'd certainly need more information than "just stick some poles in the ground and shove a commercial 'gazebo cover' over them." That model, however, is precisely what eHow.com's "Jane Smith" wrote in the HomeSteady.com post, "How to Make a PVC Gazebo." Yeah, sure...

Carpenter's Math for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXIV

Marking rafters with a framing square

In the real world, where most of us – although fewer than a couple of years ago – live, we expect people who answer a question to know, or at least think they know, the answer. That's what "good faith" means, after all. That's not, unfortunately, true of internet content farms like eHow.com; where people who'd never taken on a task routinely told us how to do it based on a few minutes' research. Why anyone would believe them is, sadly, beyond us. It's why we're here, after all: to attempt to correct some of the bullshit these people sprayed around cyberspace. We found today's nominee, Donald Miller, trying to explain "Carpentry Math Problems" for HomeSteady.com.

Volume Calculation for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXIX

more than just "squares and rectangles"

The AN staffers all have their own mental checklist that help them decide who gets a nomination for DotD and who just earns a passing scornful glance. If an article checks off one box, unless that it's the utter bullshit box, the post generally gets ignored. Then there are the posts that get most of it right but just don't measure up. Today's nomination is one such post, a Hunker.com article by returning DotD Jean Asta. The English Lit grad thought she had figured out "How to Calculate Gallons in a Container"... but she hadn't.

Hexagon Diagonals for Dummies (Again) - The Freelance Files MMLXXXIX

nine hexagon diagonals

We recheck the content we've given DotD awards on a semi-regular basis, mostly to see if someone has been so ashamed they deleted it or the content farm hosting it has decided it is so bad it needs to be rewritten. A while back, we noticed that a geometry post (by Jess Kroll, proud possessor a MFA in creative writing) had been deleted by Leaf Group. We didn't pay much attention until we realized that it had actually been sent to the "cleanup team" for a rewrite. The problem? rewrite specialist Rosann Kozlowski did little more than reword and lengthen Kroll's version of "How to Find the Diagonal of a Hexagon."

Black Box Calculation for Dummies

driveway with small radius entrance

You know that old saying that goes, "Give a man a fish..."? Yeah, that one. well, today we're gonna meet a freelancer who hands out fish but doesn't teach people how to fish. We have a pretty good idea why she doesn't: she doesn't know, herself. She's ten-time DotD Charlotte Johnson, who thought she could bullshit her way through the eHow.com question, "How to Figure Square Footage for a Driveway With Radius Entrances" (now at GardenGuides.com). Char found an answer, of sorts, but it's a pretty safe bet she didn't know why it worked or, more importantly, under what circumstances her answer would – and wouldn't – work.

Vaulted Ceilings for Dummies

vaulted kitchen ceiling

One question that regularly comes up the meetings where staffers present their "how-to" candidates for the DotD is something along the line of, "Did this person ever wonder why someone googled that question in the first place?" Sometimes it's pretty obvious that the freelancer in question never bothered to think the problem through, either because of ignorance or because of  avarice (probably both). It's hard to tell which is the case in the F. R. R. Mallory eHow.com post, "How to Hang a Pot Rack from a Vaulted Ceiling" – but we rather suspect greed. We'd like to think nobody could be that ignorant, especially someone who claims to have "worked as an architect."

Angles and Degrees for Dummies

Irregular polygon angles

One of the staffers was trying to get the office Google Home to play a radio station not long ago and found that the station's relationship with TuneIn was... fraught. She had to specify not just the call letters, but also the frequency and streaming service to get her tunes; e.g., "Play KLMN 100.7 on TuneIn." If she expanded the request to, "Play KLMN 100.7 FM on TuneIn," Ms Google would say, "I think you want to listen to the radio. Is that right?" Google's or TuneIn's screwup notwithstanding, there's a lesson there. It's a lesson eHowian Karl Wallilus should have learned before pounding out the Sciencing.com post "How to Find Degrees in Polygons."

Survey Acreage for a Dummy Fifth-Grader

irregular polygon

We strenuously avow that no one here at the Antisocial Network has made a living out of assuming that the average person is dirt-stupid. We regret that we cannot make a similar statement about the fine folks who populated the archives of eHow.com or the niches into which Leaf Group has dumped old eHow.com content. For a classic example of assuming abject stupidity, let's take a look at the Sciencing.com post "How to Calculate Acreage From a Survey," as barfed up by C. Taylor (the C. seems to stand for Chad).

Hectares for Dummies

hectare to acre

Since so many of the staffers here at the Antisocial Network have a science background, it stands to reason that many of them are careful about accuracy when it comes to numbers, especially conversion factors. It is our experience, however, that many freelance writers with a... "creative writing" background are less interested in accuracy and more interested in style. That may be why eHow.com became the laughingstock of the internet just before it was blitzed by Google's Panda II update. Be that as it may, a lot of their work survives, including the Sciencing.com post, "How to Calculate Hectares," created by Todd Whitesel.

Convex Fences for Dummies

curved-top fence

One of the staffers moved from the south to the Midwest a few years ago and was taken aback by the prevalence of so-called "scalloped" fences; those that have a curving top between each pair of posts instead of a straight line. Truth be told, she thinks it looks stupid; though the arched-top style (convex curves) is a little more pleasing. Apparently, someone thinks the fence is "cool," so they googled "How to Cut a Convex Design in My Fence" and Mary Lougee answered it for eHow.com (now niched at HomeSteady.com). Unfortunately, Mary had some... problems.

Megapixels for Dummies

Megapixel comparison

In the earliest days of eHow.com, just about any bozo could hang out a shingle and declare him- or her-self (there were no them-selves in those days) an expert. A lot of the dreck pumped out by "contributors" in the early days has gone to the great electron dump in the sky, but enough of it remains that you can still get a flavor of the quality of material pumped out by anonymous hacks only interested in a few bucks. We're talking hacks like "chemist," who foisted "How to Increase Megapixels" on eHow.com back in 2009; it lives on (still) at Techwalla.com.

A PVC Kennel for Dummies

A cute... but not cheap! PVC dog pen

No matter what day of the week or time of the year, the Antisocial Network's world headquarters has at least one dog roaming the office. We loves our puppies... but if restraint ever becomes necessary, we have a nice folding wire playpen that we can set up either as a door gate or as a doggie corral (it was sold as a "playpen"). We understand that at one time or another, someone asked the internet "How to Build a PVC Dog Kennel," and – of course – someone at eHow.com was right there to "answer" the question. Ben Team and his plans are now at the Leaf Group niche site Cuteness.com.

Electromagnets for Dummies

electromagnet poles

More than a few of the eHow.com freelancers to whom we award the DotD managed to find a reference that answered the question they were tasked to address yet managed to botch the copy-reword-paste job they performed. Part of the reason was, of course, having to fit the "answer" into a rigid framework; the rest seems to have been that the writers were just plain ignorant. Today's award goes to one such eHow.com post, now at Sciencing.com. Let's have a look at "How to Make Electromagnets Repel" by Darby Stevenson

Holes in Trees for Geometry Dummies

hole through (small)  tree

Alfred, Lord Tennyson wrote, "Theirs was not to reason why / Theirs but to do and die."¹ It's often misquoted as "Ours is not to reason why," and that's why we thought of it today: that phrase might as well have been the motto of the freelancers who contributed to eHow.com. Take, for instance, the HomeSteady.com content scribbled down by Damon Koch; a little something titled "How to Drill a Hole Through a Tree."

Quadrilateral Area for Dummies

irregular quadrilateral

If you've spent any time with a middle-school math student lately, you have probably been introduced to the various formulas for areas of polygons. In particular, there are different formulas for four-sided polygons (quadrilaterals) depending on the shape in question: rectangle, parallelogram, or trapezoid. But what if the shape is none of the above? In that case, you want to know "How to Calculate Area for an Uneven Quadrilateral." We suggest, however, that you not look to Beverlee Brick and her Sciencing.com post for an answer...

Acreage for Dummies

complex polygon outline

Today's nomination is a little different from most. While we usually pick apart a post for such sins as inaccuracy, misinformation, and downright dumbassery; today we're just going to point out the fallacy of the entire eHow pantheon of niche sites (for those of you who've missed it, the vast majority of content at the once and former eHow.com has been moved into "niche" websites). The cause of that fallacy was, and remains, the site owner's insistence on a  minimum word count (MWC). Today, Brenda Scottsdale falls victim to the MWC with her Sciencing.com post, "How Is an Acre Measured?"

What Is a Radian... for Dummies

radian definition

The staffer who specializes in mathematics has had a rough couple of months, what with a head cold that just wouldn't let go and then, of all things, a ruptured eardrum. It was weird watching blood run out of the poor kid's ear! But he's back, and we thought we'd let him ease into action with something he says is almost a gimme. Let's have a look, then at what he turned up: repeat DotD John Papiewski (sometimes known as J. T. Barett) and the Sciencing.com post, "What Is a Radian?"

Slope-Intercept for Dummies

graph of y = -2/3x + 3

It can be just a little amusing – infuriating, too – to see the kind of mess made of even the most elementary mathematics posts by people who studiously avoided any form of mathematics while in college. Watching a J-school grad tackle complex geometry problems, for instance, is an exercise in utter confusion. Apparently, some B-school¹ grads have it just as bad; grads like Bradley James Bryant, who demonstrated critical innumeracy in "How to find Y Value for the Slope of a Line" at Sciencing.com.

The Geometry of Squares for Dummies

diagonal of a square

We spend a lot of time at the Antisocial Network browsing the niche sites where Leaf Group (the former Demand Media Studios¹) has stashed much of the content formerly found at eHow.com. Why? Partly because so many other content farms have gone tits-up and partly because eHow.com was the root cause of the "Panda update" at google that killed those content farms. The latter is mostly because of the quality of the content, content like "How to Find the Height of a Square," an Allison Horky production at Sciencing.com.

Formula Tomfoolery for Dummies

equilateral triangle area

When it comes to any math more complex than 2+2=4, a lot of people either throw up their hands in despair or run screaming for the exits. We long ago figured out that any math "teacher" who has ever used the phrase, "It's intuitive" simply does not understand what it means to "not get it." On the other hand, plenty of freelancers claim to "get it," but don't. We can't be certain which camp Sciencing.com's Allan Robinson falls into, but we suspect it's the whole intuitive camp, based on his post, "How to Calculate the Area of an Equilateral Triangle."