Reasonableness Tests for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLXXXII

Waffle-weave blanket

Are you familiar with the "reasonableness test" concept? It's simple: before you provide an answer to a question or perform a task, ask yourself, "Is my response reasonable?" You could save yourself some embarrassment. For instance, you're making change at your garage sale and someone pays for that six-dollar bicycle with a crisp new ten-dollar bill. Is it reasonable to give them a ten-dollar bill in change? a twenty? Of COURSE not! Well, we don't think MrsBrown performed a reasonableness test before she dashed off a review of a cotton blanket at Kohls.com. 

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).

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!

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...

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 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."

How Dummies Change Tires on Snapper Mowers - The Freelance Files MMCLXXXVIII

Where's the spare, Ken?

This one's an oldie but a goodie (well, actually a "baddie"); first published more than a decade ago. In today's nominee, we learn – once again – that some freelancers would say anything to collect a few bucks from the people at Demand Media Studios¹ (DMS, as in, "You can't spell 'dumbass' without 'DMS.'"). One of them, today's award-winner, is a guy we've seen before: Kenneth Crawford; who way back in 2010 attempted to fool people, beyond the content editors, into believing that he knew "How to Change a Tire on a Snapper Lawn Mower" at GardenGuides.com. For the record, folks, Ken didn't know...

Living Fence Posts for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXXVI

barbed wire in tree

Based on years of experience, our staffers firmly believe that there is no more dangerous freelancer than one who claims to be an expert... or is so expert that they head up some department at a content farm. We've already featured (eleven times!) one such self-declared expert who was formerly the "travel channel manager" at content farm Helium.com. Today's nominee, Gail Delaney, apparently fancies herself a horticulture expert, in part because she "has years of gardening experience" and edits gardening for "BellaOnline." Unfortunately, Gail didn't quite know how to address some poor shmuck's question, "How to Use Live Trees for Fence Posts."

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...

Overloaded Circuits for Dummies - the Freelance Files MMCXXXIII

overloads aren't short circuits

For some reason, the average person simply doesn't understand the electricity that powers almost everything in the modern home. We blame educational institutions that award "degrees" in film studies and art history without actually requiring that the recipient understand the world around us. We don't think it's necessary to be able to derive Ohm's Law or define the coulomb, but being able to discuss the basics would certainly help a person figure out what's going on when there's a problem. Into that breach, unfortunately, eHow.com's Karl Wallulis vaulted back in 2015 with the post, "How to Check for an Electrical Circuit Overload" (now living at Hunker.com).

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...

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.

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."

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.

Lapidary for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXIII

We usually hesitate to use words like "amusing" to describe the output of the more clueless freelancers we feature, but sometimes we simply have to admit it: the "work" some of  these people have performed leaves a lot to be desired. Take today's nominee, first-timer Jonita Davis (back when she was "Bylines by Jo). Wandering far outside the comfort zone of her English BA, Davis took on the somewhat ambiguous topic posed by the nice people at eHow.com, "How to Cut & Polish Stones" (it's now at Hunker.com). The result, unfortunately, was every bit as ambiguous as the topic...

Garage Door DIY for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXII

homemade garage doors

The fine folks at eHow.com (now a division of Leaf Group) have long been kind enough to include a short bio of their contributors so that readers are aware of their expertise. It's interesting, however, to note that the vast majority of the site's content was written by people who claimed no expertise whatsoever in the topic at hand. Just today, we found an eHowian whose bio said that she had not only a Juris Doctor, but also "degrees in economics and business and teaching." Yeah, well, none of that massive pile of degrees appears to have prepared Samantha Kemp to tell us how to make an "Inexpensive DIY Garage Door"

Rebuilding a Lawnmower Engine for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXI

small engine parts

One of the staffers was griping about his string trimmer recently and stated that he would "Never, never, never buy a gas-powered trimmer again." A couple of days later he sheepishly admitted that he had spend a few bucks at a local BigBox to get a carburetor adjustment tool, and his trimmer was running just fine now, thank you. We submit that even that experience is more than the minimal knowledge displayed by returning DotD Tom Lutzenberger, who failed to pay attention to a critical word in his GardenGuides.com attempt to explain "How to Rebuild Lawn Mower Engines."

Porous Media for Dummies

Porosity vs permeability

We've noticed over the years that a lot of freelancers seem to think they know simple answers to complex questions but, in reality, know little more than whoever asked the question in the first place. We noticed that again today when we ran across an English major (albeit from Harvard) who seemed convinced that she knew how to answer the deceptively simple question "What Is a Porous Medium?" at WiseGEEK niche site AboutMechanics.com. We're here to tell you that E. A. (Elizabeth) Sanker didn't do a very good job.

Crushing Rocks for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCII

arc welding

Some of our DotDs make themselves known through their inability to answer a question, whether through ignoance or stupidity; others by their inability to understand the question or the reason it was asked. Of course there are those who manage to check both boxes; but we think today's nominee, unlike many of his fellow eHow.com "contributors," actually found an answer of sorts to the question. Victor Fonseca failed in two ways, however: first, he didn't understand the instructions he parroted and second, he failed to think through why someone might ask "How to Build a Rock Crusher" (now at SFGate.com).