Plate Grooves for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXLI

shelf with plate groove

It's Monday, and we're in kind of a hurry. Bear with us... Being in a hurry seems to have been  requirement for the freelancers who wrote for eHow.com's content farmers, especially when it comes to facts. Given that repeat offender Nichole Liandi barely topped 200 words for her work (a word we use loosely, mind you) in "How to Put a Plate Groove in a Shelf," it's surprising how little knowledge the young history grad managed to convey to her readers.

Beadboard on Cabinets for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXV

Beadboard door

We don't give legal advice here, mostly because we don't have a lawyer on staff. Oddly enough, however, we've run across several freelancers among the eHow.com "contributors" who flaunt their JD degrees. We have to say, though, that unless their content is at LegalBeagle.com (yet another Leaf Group niche site, believe it or not) they seem to be pretty much clueless about their chosen topics. That's precisely the impression we got from one Samantha Kemp, a Razorback grad and practicing attorney, when we came across what she thought about the eternal question, "Can You Put Beadboard on Kitchen Cabinets?" (Sam's "answer" is at at Homesteady.com).

A Farmhouse Table for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXIII

real farmhouse table

Are you tired of tables yet? We know we are...  so, we promise, this is the last one, at least in this consecutive run of table talk. Who knows what dumbassery lurks on the 'net for us to expose in the future? We're sure there's a lot. OK, with that out of the way, let us have a look at Caprice Castano and her attempt to tell eHow.com readers "How to Build a 12-Foot Farmhouse Table" way back in 2009. Leaf has since migrated the post to HomeSteady.com, if anyone cares. We know we don't!

Square Tables from Round for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCXII

round table with apron

Another day, another freelancer pretending to know how to build a table in order to collect ten bucks from the nice people at eHow.com. Will wonders never cease... Rhetorical question: of course they won't! So, once more into the breach: here's today's nominee, a sometime clown who goes by the handle of A.W. Ellison (also known as Bill Ellison), who once visited the dreck known as "How to Convert a Round Table to Square" on eHow. Today, it resides at HomeSteady.com.

Half-Round Tables, the Dummy Approach - The Freelance Files MMCCXI

"beveled wood pieces"

Maybe we're in a rut... or maybe we just hit a rich vein of freelance dumbassery. You decide. Whichever, today's the third day in a row for us to feature some greed-sucking J-school grad attempting to lift pertinent information from a couple of online sources to create instructions for crafting a piece of furniture, namely a table. Today, we'll wade through a post at HomeSteady.com (formerly eHow.com) written by romance novelist Becky Lower; something she said would show her readers "How to Build a Half Moon Table." That's one freelancer's opinion...

Triangular Tables for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCX

simple corner table

Another day, another clueless freelancer pretending to be an accomplished woodworker. As the Twitter hashtag says, #mustbeeHow... whatever the case, today's nomination accrues to yet another HomeSteady.com post bundled with such fine work as that of the previous DotD, Judi Light Hopson. Today's awardee is accounting grad-slash-hotel geek Dan Zisko, who foisted "How to Make a Triangular Corner Table" on the 'net in hopes of collecting a few bucks from eHow.com. Shame on him: it's pretty obvious he had no idea what he was talking about!

Vanity Tables for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCIX

simple vanity table

Few freelancers irk our staffers more than the ones who pretend to be providing DIY instructions even though they have no idea how to do it themselves. Some of the most irksome ones, IOHO, are those who attempt to tell us how to build stuff out of wood using carpentry tools, lumber, and fasteners. Not long ago, we ran across a fairly long list of such freelancers with DIY plans for various tables, thanks to Leaf Group's "bunching" strategy at their HomeSteady.com niche. Here's the first nomination from that bunch, returning DotD Judi Light Hopson, with her attempt to transcribe plans for "How to Build a Wood Makeup Vanity Table."

Making Table Legs for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCVII

broken table leg

We long ago learned that during the "information age" more than a little of the information you get is... suspect. Kindly note that we aren't talking Russian bot farms pushing fake news (although that's a heckuva problem); no, we're talking about greedy freelancers pretending to know all about a subject they'd never heard of before or telling you "how-to" instructions for something they've never done themselves. Though there are a lot of sources of such misinformation, the site eHow.com has always seemed to be the mother lode of such dross. That's where we found repeat DotD Owen E. Richason IV pretending to know "How to Make Sturdy Table Legs" (it's now at HomeSteady.com). Here's a hint: he didn't.

Your Own Bamboo Flooring for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCV

bamboo flooring

Among the most doofus of all the many, many doofus posts at the mother lode of misinformation (eHow.com) were the ones where an anonymous seventh-grader asked a question about a complex manufacturing processes and some liberal arts graduate "contributor" to the site pretended to answer that question. One of our nominations for Dumbass of the Decade was hot tub salesman Janos Gal, who seemed to think homeowners could harvest lumber from their yards to make flooring. We kid you not... Well, Gal wasn't alone in his dumbassery: meet Wendy Reynolds, who tried to tell her readers "How to Make Bamboo Wood Floors" for HomeSteady.com.

How a Dummy Builds a Sauna Door - The Freelance Files MMCXCVII

cedar sauna door

Many of the Antisocial Network staffers are occasional woodworkers who have a reasonably good grasp how to work with wood to carry out tasks ranging from framing carpentry to furniture-making. None of them is at the level of a professional, though, so they're not too proud to look for help from people with more knowledge and/or experience. That being said, a quick poll of the staff revealed that none of them had ever built a sauna (or even assembled one from a kit). Still, every last one of them could pick out at least a few of the many flaws in a HomeSteady.com article that claimed to explain "How to Make a Sauna Door," a post penned by sometime jazz pianist, voice actor, and EMT Brandon Salo.

A Dummy Converts Board Feet to m² - The Freelance Files MMCXCVI

board feet

Try as we might, we just can't forgive the freelancers we catch prattling on about topics they'd never even heard of before accepting their "assignment"; at least the ones who make it pretty obvious from what they write that they still didn't after doing the writing. We notice that particular shortcoming quite frequently among the people who pounded out content for the former eHow.com, content Leaf Group has sine distributed among its many niche sites. One such spreader of bull is Charlotte Johnson, whom we caught pretending to know "How to Convert a Board Foot to a Square Meter" for HomeSteady.com.

How a Dummy Builds a Shadow Box - The Freelance Files MMCLXXXIX

shadow box

The woodworkers on our staff are all well acquainted with the carpenter's adage that reminds us to "measure twice, cut once." Even our experienced craftspeople know that sometimes you still have to cut twice, especially if the tolerances are small. Everyone around here, however, knows two things about what's commonly called dimensional lumber – e.g., 2-by-6s and 1-by-2s: first, the measurements are not as stated (a 2-by-4 is really 1½-by-3½) and second, a board has thickness. One or both of those facts often seems beyond the knowledge and experience of many an eHow.com freelancer, however, as in the case of Misty Barton. Misty demonstrated her ignorance in an OurPasteimes.com post titled "How to Build a Medal Display Case."

More Wine Rack Plans by Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXXX

Lattice wine rack

When someone asks for a "how-to" to help them take on a new or unfamiliar DIY task, it seems to us that help should come in the form of useful instructions. You know, instructions like "do this, then that, then the other." Makes perfect sense to us; you? So when someone asks how to make a new top for their classic convertible, it's not helpful to tell them to buy one. Still with us? Well, that's pretty much the "help" eHowian Heide Braley provided in her HomeSteady.com post, "DIY Lattice Wine-Rack Kitchen Cabinet."

Narrower Doors for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXLIV

Using a saw guide

Face it: there must be about a bazillion websites out there that offer do-it-yourself instructions, a lot of them written by professionals who want to help out amateur DIYers. So why would anyone who wants to know "How to Cut Down the Width of a Door" look to a freelance writer with a BA in English, in particular freelancers who – like Hunker.com contributor Andrea Stein – clearly have no idea what they're talking about? Yet there she is, bold as brass, spreading her personal version of dumbassery around the internet...

Cutting Table Legs for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXXVII

sawing a table leg

The freelancers who wrote for eHow.com were required to write a short (75 to 100 words) "introduction" for their posts; a demand that often revealed the writer's utter lack of knowledge about the topic at hand. After Google's Panda II update took the metaphorical wind out of many a content farm's sails, only the most desperate freelancers were left scrounging for "titles to write to" at eHow.com. That apparently includes Kate McFarlin, an insurance agent with "extensive experience in covering... home improvement." That's hard to believe, given McFarlin's mishandling of the HomeSteady.com post, "How to Lower the Height of a Table."

A Floating Mantel for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXXII

floating mantel

Some of the most bizarre project instructions we've run across in our web searches can be chalked up to "creative writing" graduates who insist on attempting to adapt perfectly good plans for one project to something that is wildly different. It gets even worse when some such freelancer pretends to have gotten instructions from a source that clearly doesn't address the topic in question. We found returning DotD Katherine Barrington committing the sin of woodworking dumbassery when she posted the eHow.com content called, "How to Build a Floating Fireplace Mantel."¹

DIY Frames for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXX

Measuring for a frame

Few things irk the Antisocial Network staff DIY types more than the freelancers who "accidentally" wander out of their comfort zones and attempt to craft some half-assed set of instructions for what should be a simple project. That is, however, precisely what we found eHowian Nora Zavalczki doing when we ran across her OurPastimes.com post, "How to Make a Cheap Frame for a Whiteboard." We have no opinion on whether Zavalczki was competent to write her dozens of articles about arts and crafts, but she sure as hell did not know how to frame a picture...

Building a Roll-top Door with a Dummy - The Freelance Files MMCIV

articulating roll-top door 

Trying to follow instructions written by an expert can be difficult if you have no experience with the task. Trust us on that: you lack the anility to visualize the various techniques and procedures... Difficult as doing so may be, you're far worse off if you try to follow directions reworded by freelancers who had no idea what they were talking about. We found exactly that situation when we read the eHow.com post, "How to Build a Wooden Roll Top Door in a Cabinet," posted by freelancer Jonah Morrissey.

Woodworking Plans for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMLXXXIV

well-designed bread box detail

Starting at about the time of Google's Panda II update, contributors" to eHow.com began being required to cite references for their (alleged) how-to instructions. Since some of them did nothing but perform an MSU¹ job for plans, they often had to scramble for something that at least looked like they'd read it. The more cunning ones just pretended to have found plans or instructions in some offline reference, but some just forged ahead and pumped out their crap, relying on eHow.com's "content editors" to be just as unfamiliar with the tasks as they were. Brandon Salo apparently fell in the second group, at least according to his Hunker.com post that allegedly gave people "Do-it-Yourself Plans for a Wooden Breadbox." Hint: it didn't...

Bed Post Repair by Dummies - The Freelance Files MMLXXXIII

Split Bedpost

We have a couple of staffers who routinely build their own furniture. We're not talking fancy-schmancy stuff; mostly bookcases and the occasional table ("occasional table," get it?) That's probably why they aren't particularly forgiving when they run across some clueless freelancer attempting to explain woodworking, especially when it comes to working with furniture. The level of peeve just rises when said freelancer pretends to have gotten their "how-to" information from a source that didn't even address the task in question. With that in mind. here's their response to "How to Fix a Broken Bed Post," a post by Jean Asta at eHow.com (now living at SFGate.com).