Water Supply Lines for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLVIII

faucet water lines

The business model of the cluster of niche sites formerly known as eHow.com was deceptively simple: collect questions asked of search engines by random English-speaking (or approximately so) knowledge seekers and send them to a stable of freelancers to answer them. We say deceptively simple because, well, the sad fact is that the freelancers often knew even less about their topics than the people who asked the question in the first place. Take, for instance, today's nominee. Like many a contributor to the mother lode of misinformation, Christopher John was a J-school grad; a career choice that apparently did not lend itself well to answering questions like "How to Replace Kitchen Faucet Water Lines That Don't Reach" (now living at niche site HomeSteady.com).

Adding a New Tee in PVC Pipe for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXLVI

Fitting a slip tee

When it comes to the world of do-it-yourself home maintenance and repair, we long ago realized that amateurs rarely jump online to ask about the most basic tasks. We guess that's because complete amateurs don't tackle the simplest task; they hire someone to do it for them. It's when they have a little experience and have encountered something new that they start googling solutions to the problem at hand. That realization is why we think eHowian Steve Hamilton missed the point when he pounded out the SFGate.com post called, "How to Make a T in the Middle of PVC Plumbing."

Dishwasher Knockout Plugs for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXXI

disposal plumbing

Remember the cartoon that told you to pound forehead on keyboard? Every once in a while an Antisocial Network staffer gets the urge to do exactly that. It usually happens when someone comes across the sort of dumbassery that only occurs when "communications" majors try to explain tasks and procedures they've never attempted themselves by using references that... well, that aren't on point. Most recently, a staffer ran across a post by returning DotD Chad Buleen, who was pretending to know help someone complaining that "My Dishwasher Won't Drain and I Just Installed a New Garbage Disposal" at Hunker.com (a niche site full of content from eHow.com).

Water Supply Lines for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXX

compression fittings

The website formerly known as eHow.com was infamous for forcing its contributors to adhere to a strict "house style." One of the format requirements was that every post must begin with an introduction, of 75 to 100 words. Given that many of the people were writing instructions for tasks they'd never themselves heard of, much less carried out, a lot of those introductions were... well, they were hilarious. A case in point is Christopher John, who attempted to explain to HomeSteady.com readers "How to Replace Kitchen Faucet Water Lines That Don't Reach."

Toilet Repair Tips by Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXIV

modern toilet valve

Sometimes when our staffers gambol through the fertile fields of the local content farms, they get the distinct impression that there are people who will write bullshit about any topic as long as they can pick up a few pennies for minimal effort. The worst are, of course, the ones who stuffed their content with keywords (even though Google has long been onto this supposed "one tiny trick") even while knowing little or nothing about the topic at hand. One of the worst sites for this rubbish – maybe even worse than eHow – is the site EzineArticles.com. Despite their claim that "EzineArticles.com brings real-world experts and ezine publishers together"...really, WTF does that even mean?... most of their content is dreck like the Lora Davis article, "Toilet Repair Tips."

Venting Shower Drains for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCIX

Many of the questions people plug into their search engines don't actually require much thought. Common sense – which is unfortunately rather uncommon in this day and age – would answer them if the OQ just thought for a minute. Nevertheless, the nice people at eHow.com snapped those queries up and sent them to their crew of "contributors" to answer; a crew whose grasp of common sense seems in retrospect to be rather tenuous. Take today's DotD nominee, returnee Steven Symes. Once again we find Symes pretending to know enough about plumbing to answer the question, "Do You Have to Vent a Shower Pan Drain?" for HomeSteady.com.

We said "once again" because this is Steve's seventh trip to the podium, and the fourth time he'd tried to convince people of his plumbing expertise. 

For the record, "Yes: you do have to vent a shower drain. You have to vent every drain in your plumbing system. Symes got that sort of right, waxing poetic about the dangers of sewer gas... which, when you think about it, is the reason that every drain in your system needs a trap as well as a vent.  Since Steven was required to pound out a certain number of words (300 to 500), he had to pass along more information. In addition to an obsession with sewer gas, Symes was a little shaky on how shower drains connect to vents: "Plumbing vent pipes connect to the drainpipes in your plumbing system, typically at the branch pipes. Multiple drainpipes feed into a larger drainpipe called a branch pipe, which then flows into the sewer drainpipe that connects to the sewer system."

Actually, none of his references said anything like that, although one did opine, rather illiterately, that,

"Vents are used in order to relief [sic] sewer gases, maintenance of the trap water sales [sic] and for oxygen admission [sic]."

In reality, every wet room – bathroom, kitchen, laundry, etc. – needs a vent pipe on the drain pipe that collects all the waste water. That's why houses have multiple vent pipes sticking through the roof. Symes more or less got that right, although with tortured prose. What he got wrong, and what caught our staffer's eye, is this crapalicious text:

"As you wash waste water down the drainpipes, that water may wash air in the drainpipes out of the plumbing system. The plumbing vent pipes replace the lost water in the drainpipes by pulling air from the outside into the pipes. Without new air coming into the pipes, the water in the traps in the plumbing fixtures may be pulled down the drainpipes. Without water in the trap pieces, the sewer gases in the pipes may flow up through the fixtures’ drain openings."

All that to say that vents prevent formation of a vacuum in the drain system. Sheesh... and to think our Dumbass of the Day couldn't figure out how to say that in one-fifth as many words! Pretty weak for an English Lit grad...

SE - PLUMBING

Faucet Removal for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMXCVI

Moen faucet

It's fairly rare for one of the staffers to come across a website we haven't featured before, not counting all those niche sites being populated with existing eHow, HubPages, and WiseGEEK content. Today's nominee, however, comes to us courtesy of a site we've never featured before, some place calling itself HowToDoThings.com. The website first burst on the scene back in 2001 and seems to have been busy in 2010-2013 (the heyday of content farms), but has been essentially moribund since early 2014. Yuri Anderson, whose expertise included such topics as "how to write a romance novel" and "how to play with a three-month-old baby" (he said to give the child a "rattler"), is our first-ever HowToDoer, thanks to his decidedly doofus post, "How To Remove a Moen Faucet."

Shower Systems for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMLXXVIII

three-knob shower control panel

No one can know, of course, but sometimes people Google search terms that are more complex – or perhaps we should say "less basic" – than the uninitiated might think. When the uninitiated in question happens to be a contributor to eHow.com or the niche sites that have taken its place, our staffers' DotDdar¹ trips quite readily. take, for instance the query, "How to Turn on a Shower That Has Three Knobs" that Damon Koch attempted to answer back in 2015. The powers that be at Leaf Group apparently decided that his submission was subpar (probably because of length), and so sent it to cleanup team member Rachelle Dragani for a rewrite. The result was... not an improvement.

Kohler Shower Repair for Dummies

leaky shower head

We suppose that there are definitive statistics somewhere out there, but out staffers are all are pretty sure that one of the most common DIY plumbing repairs is attempting to stop a leaking faucet. Since there are myriad different designs on the market that will start and stop the flow of water to a sink, hose, tub, or shower; it makes perfect sense that someone will eventually google the phrase, "My Kohler Shower Does Not Shut Off." Heaven help the poor seekers of knowledge, however, if they accidentally click on a link to the eHow.com post slapped together by Kevin Ann Reinhart.

Faucet Stems for Dummy DIY Plumbers

Disassembled faucet

Sometimes when we read through an eHow.com freelancer's how-to posts we sit there nodding, and sometimes we burst out laughing. Once in a while both happen: the freelancer's going along just fine (usually because of good source material) and suddenly hits a snag. That's what happened today, when a staffer in the plumbing division came across Nathan McGinty attempting to explain "How to Remove an Outdoor Faucet Stem" for HomeSteady.com. Actually, the guffaws erupted rather early...

Ice and Pipes for Dummies - The Freelance Files MCMLXXXVI

frozen pipe rupture

When it comes to how-to information for homeowners, we're always skeptical of the info supplied by people who don't appear to have ever actually been homeowners or, for that matter, how-to practitioners. We probably aren't the only ones with this skepticism, but we know one group of people who never seemed to mind the cognitive dissonance: the folks at eHow.com. Who else would assume that a failed psych major turned exotic dancer would know anything about plumbing? Those are, however, the credentials DMS¹ accepted from Jade Blue in her Hunker.com post, "How to Prevent PVC Pipes from Freezing."

Making Your Own Water Heater for Dummies

Plumbing for idiots

It is the unanimous opinion of the staffers here at the Antisocial Network that when someone enters the phrase "DIY Homemade Tankless Water Heater" into an internet search engine, it's one of the kind of people who undoubtedly hope to build one of the handy appliances with the skills and tools they have on hand. Apparently, however, eHow.com's Sonja Herbert was not in agreement with us. Instead, she decided that the "Homemade" portion of that search phrase was... silent.

Bogus Plumbing Advice for Dummies

splicing sewer line

A couple of months ago we found some pretty bogus instructions for splicing into a run of PVC pipe, and gave out not one but two DotD awards to the freelancers responsible for those contributions to the the stupidification of the internet. The sad part is that those two weren't the only botched sets of instructions penned by freelancing English majors who'd never tried plumbing in their lives... no we're back again with yet another award. This time it's "creative writing" grad Steve Sloane and "How to Attach a New Pipe to the Main Sewer Line" at HomeSteady.com.

Repairing Buried PVC for Dummies

PVC slip fitting

One of the biggest problems with letting random contributors write your so-called how-to content is that most of them have never attempted whatever task they're performing and thus don't realize... well, don't realize how little they actually know. Only a couple of days ago we ran across a freelancing former English major who, we are quite certain, wouldn't know "How to Repair a PVC Pipe in the Ground." Today we've found a one-time educator, Billy Brainard, showing off his own ignorance on the same topic at HomeSteady.com.

Plumbing Advice from an ESL Dropout

Gonna need a plumbing repair agency

It's been a long, long time since we last ventured into the mosquito-laden swamp that is Seekyt.com, almost a year and a half if truth be told. Once of the kids was checking an old reference, however, and ran across a post with the unenviable title "Understanding the Existence of Plumbing Repair Agencies" at the site. Some poking around with the Wayback machine revealed that the original author was one Liz Kemp, even though the post is now attributed to "General Contributor" (someone named Janice, allegedly a founder of the site). We'll be honest: we don't think "Liz" knew what she was writing about. Heck, we don't even think Janice knew what she was saying: Google Translate to English, anyone?

Splicing PVC for Dummy DIY Plumbers

tying into PVC drain

You may have noticed by now that we bitch a lot about freelancers attempting to provide instructions for jobs they've never done, will never do, and don't understand in the first place. The nice people at eHow.com assembled a vast library of freelance content of this type, enough so that we long ago dubbed the site the "mother lode of misinformation." Today, we nominate yet another eHowian, Laurie Brown, whose "How to Tap Into a Basement PVC Drain Pipe" has been shoved into the niche site HomeSteady.com by the owners of eHow, Leaf Group.

Sink Tailpieces for Dummies

bathroom sink diagram

The website formerly known as eHow.com had a fairly straightforward method of handing our assignments to its freelance "contributors": one team scraped likely-looking search phrases from the internet and assigned them to categories (sometimes nonsensically, in fact). The contributors eagerly awaited a "title drop" and would immediately claim as many as possible. The trick, some believed, was to grab a bunch that seemed similar and "specialize." That must be why the name of Steven Symes so often pops up in the plumbing department. Well, Steve's back, with another HomeSteady.com post. "Can You Replace Metal Around Sink Drains?"

New Shower Heads the Dummy Way

using a wrench on a shower head

It's been a while since we stopped by the former WhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHow... or whatever the name was before it became Catalogs.com and started shilling for... well, for catalogs. Not that they exist any more. Where were we? Oh, yeah, it's been a while. That's why we pulled the list of candidates from the site out of storage and plucked an article by Julie Henry at random. Julie was trying to tell people about "Changing a Shower Head," and got a tad off track.

Water Pump Repair for Dummies

Maybe Anna meant a dishwasher pump housing?

In early 2014, so-called "title drops" dried up at eHow.com, and the local freelancers became positively desperate for something that would earn them a stipend. Many of the more... scrupulous? writers (the ones who sometimes had a notion of what they were talking about) gave up and left, but those who stayed behind often found themselves far, far, FAR! outside their comfort zone when attempting to "answer" some poor schmuck's Google search. They were, however, lucky that the remaining content editors were every bit as desperate, not to mention clueless, as they were, That's probably how Sincerity Anna managed to get "How to Repair Electric Water Pumps" published, eventually landing at Hunker.com.

Twin Shower Heads for Dummies

double shower head

You know you're probably in the wrong place when you fins instructions for a plumbing project and the author included "references" and "resources" that had nothing to do with plumbing, right? Right... Well, that's exactly what happened when one of the staffers did some research on an eHow.com post by Jennifer Ratliff. Jen's citations for "How to Add a Second Shower Head" included a blog post on replacing shower heads and a vendor site on choosing the right shower head. Unfortunately, there wasn't anything about plumbing...