Oil Fields for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLX

This ain't no desert, Jason

One of the staffers "quiet quit" the petroleum industry a few years ago (before everyone on the planet decided to switch jobs, for what it's worth), but still retains all the basic knowledge necessary to fact-check some of the rubbish our DotD nominees have pumped out over the years. Given the average person's ignorance of the petroleum  industry, it's no surprise that misconceptions and misinformation are the rule rather than the exception; which is why she's rarely surprised by freelancer dumbassery about the oil business. Once in a while, though... and today's one of those days. Back to take another bite of the oil biz apple, once again demonstrating complete ignorance of the industry, is Jason C. Chavis. This time he's answering (NOT!) the eternal question "What is an Oil Field?" for the WiseGEEK.com niche site AboutMechanics.com.

Hunting Dinosaur Fossils for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLIX

Dinosaur fossil (Mesozioc, Wyoming)

One of the more irritating habits of the freelancers who plied their "trade" at eHow.com and its many niche sites was a pair of diametrically opposite tendencies: either they turned simple questions complex or they turned complex questions simple. Being ignorant of the answer is, at least to us, no excuse; for eHow it was just "minimum word count" plus "SEO" equals cash. Sadly, some of eHow's (now Leaf Group's) freelancers are still at it: witness marine biologist and small dog trainer Marina Somma attempting to answer the question, "In Which States Are Dinosaur Fossils Found?" for Sciencing.com (with her usual little help from biologist Sylvie Tremblay). It's a rewrite of a 2011 post by Craig Colin Smith...

Road Bike or Tri Bike for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXXV

Triathlon bike

It's been instructive to wander the pages of the DifferenceBetween twins (.net and .com; apparently fraternal instead of identical) while searching for DotD nominations. Truth be told, so much of the content is bogus that it's difficult to decide which one to feature. The chief problem both sites have is that any real difference can usually be discussed in a sentence or two, but that amount of verbiage wouldn't create enough page space to fit in all the ads. Thus, their contributors were forced to pad out their explanations, a practice fraught with bullshit when the writer doesn't understand the topic... which is all too often the case. Take admin¹ at DifferenceBetween.com, here caught attempting to explain the "Difference Between Road Bike and Triathlon Bike."

Crust vs. Lithosphere for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXXIII

Earth's layering

We had so much fun pointing out the dumbassery of one of the folks at DifferenceBetween.com earlier this week that we decided to come back to the site and take another lick at their contributors. Today's nominee has a Master's in linguistics, but decided to attempt to explain some basic earth science instead of staying in their lane. Meet Koshal, who pecked around the edges of the topic "Difference Between Lithosphere and Crust," meanwhile managing to make it pretty clear that any study of geology was pretty deep in his/her past.

Batter Boards for Dummies, Redux - The Freelance Files MMCXXXVI

squaring a layout

Unlike a lot of freelancers out there, our staff does due diligence in researching the topics "covered" (and we use the term loosely) by our nominees. Whether we feel expert or not, we research the topics to see if, perhaps, a freelancer stumbled over an alternative, yet still acceptable, method for how-to posts. When we were looking for possible sources of the misinformation in yesterday's post about batter boards, we found similarly clueless twaddle at another content farm (which predates the work of Nichole Liandi). Let's have a look at how Colleen McKie also got it wrong in her DoItYourself.com post, "How to Build Batter Boards" without, we might add, any improvement from "review" by Gabriel Connor Salter.

Orbits and Ellipses for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMLXXX

Elliptical orbit

Let's get this straight: there are few habits of highly greedy freelancers that piss off our staffers more than a scientific illiterate mangling simple science in the name of picking up a few bucks. Sadly, we see it all the time. The Sciencing.com niche that Leaf Group built to house old eHow posts is, sadly, a gold mine of utter bull written about science, and one of the main reasons is the site owner's minimum word count (MWC). We long ago lost count of the number of times an eHow contributor got the answer to a simple question right and then pounded out 250 more words of utter bullshit to meet the MWC. Meet today's nominee, returning DotD Henri Bauholz, and the butcher job he performed on the question, "What Is the Shape of Earth's Orbit?"

Hydrocarbon Reservoirs for Total Dummies

simplified petroleum reservoir model

Sometimes.... no, make that a lot of the time... we run across internet freelancers who get an answer more or less right, then blow any possible credibility by saying inane, stupid, and utterly clueless crap in an effort to expand on their answer. This frequently happens when the writers in question have been forced to pad the simple answer to meet some arbitrary minimum word count. At the former eHow.com (and the many niches into which Leaf Group has now stuffed its content), that was a common problem – so common, in fact, that the AN staffers have a tag for "minimum word count" on this blog. Well, here's another one for the tag: meet Sheila Johnson and her Sciencing.com post, "Oil & Gas Are Found in What Kind of Rocks?"

Decomposed Granite for Dummies

Natural decomposed granite (grus) and granite

If you've followed this blog at all, you know by now that our awardees are often victimized by the intersection of their own ignorance with the structure of the venue where they're writing. Our spies¹ tell us that contributors to the eHow.com websites were required to write a certain number of words (300-500) because the site's SEO gurus believed that was the "highest quality." Never mind that the concept of accuracy went out the window when their writes started padding a short answer with useless (and often misinterpreted) factoids. That, we suspect, is what happened to Tyler Lacoma when he submitted "What Is Decomposed Granite?" to eHow.com back in 2010 (it can now be found at the niche site GardenGuides.com).

Exploding Rocks for Dummies

Permeability and porosity

Staffers at the Antisocial Network long ago lost count of the number of freelancers tripped up by the arbitrary minimum word count (MWC) forced on contributors to eHow.com and its sister sites. Way too many times we've found someone who was cable to come up with a simple (and sometimes even correct) answer ten or twenty words long, and then sink the post with padding full of misinformation and errors. That's precisely what happened with today's nominee, one Delia Rollow, whose "Bachelor of Science in environmental studies" apparently didn't cover the information necessary to write a list of "Rocks That Explode Around Fire Pits" at (for reasons unknown) Hunker.com.

Geographic Research for Dummies

sample precinct map

We frequently find ourselves amused by the antics of the freelancers at the erstwhile eHow.com when faced with an ambiguous question. They weren't paid by the word and (usually) weren't paid by the hit, so it was to their advantage to pound out a simplistic "answer" to the question as fast as possible, even when it didn't make sense or was woefully incomplete. Today's nominee, Nellie Day, fell into the trap of tunnel vision when faced with the question, "How Can I Find What Precinct I Live in?" at Synonym.com.

Triangulation for the Dummy Hiker

triangulation on a topo map

One of our staffers thinks that the somewhat arbitrary structure forced on freelancers at the former eHow.com was responsible for more stupidification of the internet than any other feature of the site. We've seen many occasions when a freelancer who'd put together a simple answer to a question got tripped up by the details necessary to pad the post to meet the minimum word count. Today's nominee is similar, but different: she's media studies student Tatyana Ivanov, and she contributed "How to Triangulate a Position" to GoneOutdoors.com.

Amperage for Dummies

Our staffers check the links to our nominations on a regular basis, and update the list of deleted and/or rewritten content whenever necessary. Not long ago one of the interns was looking into a post originally written by five-time winner Michael O. Smathers when he saw that it had been sent to the rewrite team by Leaf Group. The resulting work was apparently good enough to fool the current crop of content editor, but the job that Vincenzo Giambanco did on "Capacity of a 15 Amp Circuit" at Sciencing.com was, to be polite, rather... bizarre.

Density and Volume for Middle-School Dummies

Density, mass, volume

A lot of the staffers here at the Antisocial Network have solid grounding in science and mathematics, at least enough to recognize bull when someone with a weak background tries to push it. The drones at eHow.com had quite a racket for a while, harvesting simple questions asked by teens researching homework, and providing an answer. The problem? The answer wasn't necessarily very good... like the version of "How to Calculate Volume Using Density" by David Chandler, which we found lurking at Sciencing.com.

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?"

Granite and Quartzite Compared for Dummies

granite dome

We often complain that the minimum word count imposed by the masters (chief demanders?) of eHow.com caused much of what we consider to be the site's stupidification of the internet. That's because so many of the scientific illiterates and "un-handy" freelancers could address the basic question, but — forced by the MWC to keep writing — made a hash of the less basic details. That's the problem with today's nominee, Jay Leone of Sciencing.com and the post "Difference Between Quartzite & Granite": he just wouldn't shut up.

Conglomerates for Dummies

Depending on who says it to you, the adage is either "God in in the details" or "The Devil is in the details." Either way, it should be pretty obvious that it's really the details that are important; the big picture is only a rough outline. In their travels around the 'net, our staffers often find freelance posts that get the basics right, but botch the details. That seems to be especially prevalent in posts that originated at eHow.com, perhaps because the freelancers were forced to embellish stuff in order to meet the minimum word count. Today's nominee is one such eHow post, "The Difference Between Metaconglomerate & Conglomerate," a Mitchell Land contribution to 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.

Correlating Fossils for Dummies

Representative index fossils

Accompanying the basic lack of knowledge shown by many of the contributions to the former eHow.com¹, our staffers often find that the site's style demands also placed information and accuracy in jeopardy. Why? Because instead of providing a simple answer to a question, eHowians were forced to expand that answer out to several hundred words to meet the site's minimum word count. Many an author got the gist of then answer but cloaked it in such rubbish that it became wortheless... authors like Emma Woodhouse in her Sciencing.com post, "What Is Fossil Correlation?"

Felsic Plutonic Rocks for Dummies

Classification of granites

It's been a while since we woke the staff geologist from his slumber to upbraid a freelancer for mangling some bit of earth science, but it happens that today is his (un)lucky day. A staffer was checking for dead links when she ran across one of those fascinating Leaf Group "follow-on": a post that the site's algorithm decided was related. How she happened to get to "Quartz Monzonite Vs. Granite" remains a mystery, but she decided to take a look through and see what Richard Hoyt¹ had to say.

Chloroplasts for Dummy Biology Students

Chloroplast anatomy

The geekier folks among the Antisocial Network staffers often find themselves aghast at the ignorance of the freelance writers they turn up in their searches, especially some of the J-school grads who ended up "contributing" to eHow. Of course, we don't know how many of them also contributed to other, now-defunct, content farms like AssociatedContent and Helium, but it's a safe bet some did. More's the pity, then that scientific illiterates like Sheri Lamb managed to get rubbish like "Why Are Chloroplasts So Important?"¹ published at sites like GardenGuides.com.