Security Screen Door Installation for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCV

security screen door

In the early days of eHow.com, the site's freelancers did not need to cite a source for the "information" they vomited out onto the page. Once consumers caught on, however, the site began requiring "references," which over time evolved into "reputable references." Today's nominee falls somewhere in the middle of that evolution. In the HomeSteady.com post "Gibraltar Steel Security Screen Door Installation" contributor Charmayne Smith cited what, based on the website name, appears to have been authoritative. Closer inspection, however, reveals that her resource was merely a blog post written by another freelancer. Can you say, "the blind leading the blind"?

Tool Box Locks for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXXXIII

Craftsman toolbox lock

Freelancer twaddle in general irritates the heck out of our staff, but there's almost nothing in the canon of freelance crapola that is more irritating than how-to instructions that are utterly useless to people out there asking the internet for help. Today's nominee, returning DotD Artesia Peluso, committed such a sin when she baldly lied about her "expertise" in approaching the question of "How to Replace a Lock on a Craftsman Toolbox" for HomeSteady.com.

A Secret Wall Compartment for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLVIII

According to the founder of our site, his father-in-law – a carpenter and general handyman by trade – was infamous for stashing valuables and weapons in the walls of his house. According to his wife, there's a better than even chance that there are still forgotten hidden compartments with cash and guns in houses where he used to live: he was that good. On the other hand, it wouldn't take much looking at all to find the "hidden" compartment laid out by David Secor in his SFGate.com post, "How to Make a Secret Wall Compartment."¹ That's what you get for asking a self-described "computer repairman and writer" instead of someone who knows how...

Your Front Door for Dummies

Exterior Door Security

It shouldn't surprise us, but sometimes it just does, that freelancers intent on collecting their pennies tend to get tunnel vision. We see so many of them who zero in on one aspect of a question or problem, yet never "zoom out" for the big picture – a syndrome that can lead to some uninspiring results in their writing. Take, for example, the WiseGEEK.com contributor Amy Hunter, who "gifted" the internet with her thoughts about, "What Should I Consider When Buying Exterior Door Hardware?" Amy went straight to "curb appeal," as real estate people call it, without first considering the greater implications of the question.

Locks in Metal Doors for Dummies

Bolt with drive-in latch

One of the hallmarks of the clueless freelancers at the former eHow.com was an inability to see potential problems with the "solutions" they concocted. We long ago stopped counting the times we found one of them trying to say that a technique that would work fine for situation A would also work for situation B. That's what tripped up today's nominee, who – at least according to her eHow biography – should have known better. She's returning DotD Emily Beach, here to tell readers of HomeSteady.com "How to Install Locks in Metal Doors."

Mortise Lock Repair for Dummies

mortise lock assembly

If there's any one takeaway from several years of paging through the "work" of online freelancers, it's that some people are perfectly willing to give advice about totally unfamiliar topics. The advice is free, and too often it's worth exactly what you paid for it. This is especially true of freelancers writing so-called how-to posts when they don't understand the question. Take, for instance, Anne Redler, whose eHow.com post "How to Open a Mortice [sic] Lock" (now at HomeSteady.com) is a classic example.

Garage Door Keypad Installation for Dummies

wireless garage door keypad

Most of the staffers are no longer surprised by the blind spots in the freelance posts they turn up every day in the niche sites holding former eHow content. After all, they long ago decided that the site was the "mother lode of misinformation"; although we should note that most of them didn't spend much time looking at Helium.com, AssociatedContent.com, or many of the other now-defunct content farms. Still, it takes very little effort to find a post at a site such as HomeSteady.com that, like "How to Install a Garage Door Keypad"¹ by Heather Broeker, leaves a bit to be desired in the comprehension department.

Lockset Removal the Dummies Way

Doorknob mounting plate

The staff handypersons here at the Antisocial Network tell us that swapping out a door lockset may well be one of the most simple tasks a homeowner can perform. Yet, for some odd reason, we see a surprising number of do-it-yourself posts supposedly answering hoe-to questions regarding installation or replacement of doorknobs and locksets. We guess everyone has to earn sometime, right? The problem being, of course that you definitely need to learn from someone who already knows how... and that leaves out Carl Pruit, at least based on his Hunker.com post "How to Remove an Emtek Lockset."

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

Mortise to Cylinder for the Dummy Locksmith

A mortise for a lock

From time to time, one of our staffers runs across content that just doesn't quite ring true. That's what happened with today's post. What looked like a reasonably good, although clumsy, story at Hunker.com about "How to Change From a Mortise Lock to a Knob Set" seemed, at first, to cover the necessary basis. The Antisocial Network staffer moved on to the next post and then paused: something seemed wrong. So she went back to the Hunker post by Stephanie Faris and looked again. We're glad she did...

Kwikset Deadbolt Removal, the Clueless Approach

deadbolt with set screw in thumb lever

The freelancers who so often pretended to be helping people at eHow.com had a nasty habit of confusing the specific with the general. Of course, if you know nothing about the topic at hand, it's pretty difficult to believe that there is more than one way to skin any cat. Take Brad Maddy, for instance: the young PT probably had no idea that the instructions he found for his Hunker.com post, "How to Remove a Kwikset Deadbolt," weren't the definitive guide... and it didn't help that he cited an eHow video as one of his references!

Deadbolts for the Dummy Apartment Dweller

Gonna cut a hole for that bolt with a
chisel? Really?

The biographies that contributors to eHow submitted had to meet certain standards: they needed to be of a certain length and demonstrate some of the writer's qualifications, whether as a tradesperson or a journalist (which, according to the eHow rubric, meant a writer was qualified to discuss any subject). They did not, however, have to be verified. If the bios were verified, we wonder if Emily Beach would have been able to write "How to Install an Extra Lock on an Apartment Door"¹ for HomeSteady.com (especially while calling herself Bambi Turner).

Bicycle Locks for Dummies

Proper use of bicycle U-lock

We run across some truly cockamamie notions as we read through the work of freelancers on content farms with alleged "editors"; the most prominent of which are the old Demand Media sites and WiseGEEK.com. It seems that most "editing" carried out on the occasionally cleans up grammatical errors but is primarily intended to force the content into a site style. The notion of accuracy, unfortunately, seems tertiary (at best)... just look at what freelancer S. Mithra managed to barf up in "What Should I Consider When Buying a Bike Lock?" with editing assistance from Niki Foster.

Bump Keys for Dummies

Relationship of key to pins in ordinary lock

Sometimes our staffers come across freelancer posts about topics with which they're unfamiliar, but are interesting enough that they decide to do a little research of their own. No one here, for instance, knows anything about locksmithing or, for that matter, burglary. On the other hand, our staffer suspected that eHowian freelancer Cecelia Owens knew even less about the topic of picking locks; especially after checking out the references she included in her HomeSteady.com post on "How to Open a Locked Door Using a Bump Key."

New Locks for Dummy Homeowners

front door lockset

When it comes to home safety and security, there are tasks that simply should not be left to total amateurs. One of those tasks is replacing the lock on your front door, or on you back door, for that matter. While we agree with HomeSteady.com's Julie Richards about when you might want to change your locks, we sure wish they'd found someone more qualified to write their post, "How to Change Your House Door Locks."¹

Removing a Deadbolt for Dummies

Ummm, where's the handle, Jagg?

We see a lot of obvious pseudonyms as we surf the underbelly of internet publishing, aka content farms. Some are obvious: Vee Enne, for instance, is obviously someone with the initials V. N.; others are less so, like Elle di Jensen, aka L. D. Jensen. Today's DotD has the most obvious of all, not to mention that he's both an liar and a halfwit: meet eHow.com's "Jagg Xaxx," alleged PhD in art history who (at the time of publication of "How to Take a Deadbolt Off") had been writing for 25-plus years and worked as a "cabinetmaker" for twelve years – all while looking as though he was about 25 years old. Yeah, sure... isn't he a U T grad who stayed in Austin after graduation?

Welfare Checks for Dog-Whistling Dummies

Police officer making welfare check

Are you familiar with the term "dog-whistle"? It's sometimes also known as a code word, something that most people will find innocuous while the intended audience "knows exactly what you're talking about." Donald Trump is often accused – correctly, we suspect – of using dog-whistles in those rally speeches. One such politically loaded phrase, dating from the Reagan era, is "welfare check"; and eHowian William McFadden (aka Artesia Peluso? aka Jennifer vanBaren?) jumped right on that dog's back in the Sapling.com article "What Is a Welfare Check?"¹

Bicycle Locks for Dummies

Stupid job of locking a bicycle to a post

Everyone here at Antisocial Network world HQ rides a bicycle from time to time -- it's pretty much a requirement to work here (and we pay so little most of the staff can't afford a car...). At one time or another, most of us have been the victim of a bicycle thief, which is probably why we were so unimpressed with the sadly lacking advice we found in "The Best Ways to Lock a Bike,"¹ which "communications major," fluent Spanish-speaker and experienced traveler Charlie Rainer Gaston posted on Trails.com. Based on her post, we suspect her last bicycle had a banana seat and pompoms on the handlebars...

Tubular Locks for Dummies

The keyhole of a tubular lock

There's no doubt about it: here at the Antisocial Network we get a lot of headaches attempting to read the questionable content of some of our DotD candidates. While some of them make mistakes because they simply don't have the background necessary to write about their topics, a few seem to live in a place where "alternate facts" are perfectly acceptable. Take, for instance, eHowian Alec Preble: one of his favorite tricks is to provide a general (and probably wrong) "solution" to a specific question, while citing an offline reference. The English BA pretended to know "How to Install a Tubular Lock"¹ for eHow.com when in reality he had no idea how to install a lock at all.

Home Security for Dummies

Deadbolt lock

We're not sure whether it's worse for freelancers to dump out misconceptions and bad facts because they don't understand the topic (and there's a lot of that) or for them to offer up "advice" that's incomplete or plain old wrong. Well, there's advice that's stupid and there's advice that's dangerously stupid – and the latter is perhaps the worst...

A case in point: HubPages.com contributor John Albu, writing on the topic "How to keep your home safe from burglars?"¹ Is it just us, or is that question mark a dead giveaway that the content will be crap? Whatever the case, John's sole advice involved locks. No alarms, dogs, security lights, or any of the other advice you can find at thousands of sites run by law enforcement. No, just locks: