Directional Wells for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCCLII

directional well

After years of scrolling through content farm rubbish, our staffers have codified the simplest method of determining that some freelancer somewhere was pounding out bullshit in hopes of collecting a few pennies for the "work." Ready? All you do is look for long strings of generic crapola tied together with tangentially related factoids. It's even easier when those factoids have been interpreted through the lens of ignorance. That's what we found when we did a deep dive on Christian Petersen and the WiseGEEK post, "What Is a Directional Well?" (firmly ensconced at AboutMechanics.com, for some weird reason).

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 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...

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."

Rafters vs. Truss for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXXIV

We've been having a good time over the last couple of nomination sessions making fun of some of the doofus content published by a website calling itself DifferenceBetween.com (not to be confused with an equally noxious website calling itself DifferenceBetween.net), a content farm allegedly based in Australia. Today's nominee is ostensibly one of the principals of the website, Olivia Dawson, who just couldn't pluck the necessary knowledge from her EE and HR backgrounds to explain the "Difference Between Rafters and Trusses."

Fog Lights for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLXX

headlight beam pattern comparison

Many of the self-described "professional writers" who pounded out content for eHow.com operated by the principle that as long as they could get their verbiage past the company's gatekeepers – the content editors – it must be good enough for publication. Once they realized that the content editors knew just as little about the topics as they did, the writers found themselves free to write even the most ridiculous statements, as long as they were (more or less) grammatically correct and met the website's style guidelines. That's how the kind of bogosity sprinkled throughout "Purpose of Fog Lights,"¹ a Heather Broeker post now living at ItStillRuns.com, managed to contribute to the stupidification of the internet.

Sealing a Doorway for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLIX

The business model of the former eHow.com was simple: pay people to answer questions scraped from search engines. The plan was intriguing, but the execution was horrendous: far too many of the so-called "answers" were nothing more than bald-faced attempts to reword something the eHow contributor didn't understand. It's often pretty easy to identify the work of the guilty parties if you have even an inkling of that the answer should be. One of our staffers caught eHowian Carson Barrett early on in his attempt to explain, "How to Fill in a Doorway With Drywall" for SFGate.com.

10-Speed Bikes for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLVI

Click this backward, Nicole???

When it comes to "instructions" for a task, it's pretty obvious that writers are "talking through their hats" when you see them spending more page space on peripherally-related topics than on the actual instructions. For example, if you ask someone how to change a spark plug and they spend half of their "answer" telling you about how Henry Ford's Model T line changed manufacturing... Well, that's what caught our collective eye with today's nominee, one Nicole Vulcan and her azCentral.com post, "How to Ride a 10 Speed Bicycle."

Primer Bulbs for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCLII

Where's that "hose," Steve

Although most people in our society operate internal combustion engines on a daily or near-daily basis, the vast majority of them have no clue about how the things work. Enough of us do, however, to keep most of the engines working when we need them. eHow.com contributor Steve Smith, however, is not among the cognoscenti when the subject is IC engines, despite having a BA in journalism (which supposedly makes one an expert on any topic). We base our analysis on Steve's woefully inept attempt to explain "How a Small Engine Primer Works" for ItStillRuns.com.

A Homemade Grooming Table for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXLVI

DIY grooming table

Some of the freelance writers who infested the original eHow.com in the site's earliest days developed a technique that served their bank accounts well, although it rarely served the web surfers who stumbled over their output. Simply put, when asked a how-to question, the contributor (as eHow called them) would find a blog describing doing the project and just reword it. eHow put a stop to this in later years because blogs are notoriously unauthoritative, but early examples are still out there. Today's nominee is one such example, "HOW TO MAKE A HOMEMADE DOG GROOMING TABLE" [CAPS theirs] by returning DotD J. Lang Wood (moved from eHow to Mom.com, a website Leaf Group appears to have sold off).

Priorities for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXL

From time to time one of the staffers decides to share content that wasn't written by a freelancer (as far as we know, of course) but demonstrates true dumbassery nonetheless. The vast majority come from social media sites such as Facebook, but we've also had more than one opportunity to feature the stupidity of people posting to Nextdoor.com. Here with another example of just how clueless the average person seems to be is one of our neighbors, Dustin G., whose AA in architecture didn't seem to teach him much in the way of common sense.

Building a Stable Pergola for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXXIV

stakes to keep posts plumb

In the bad old days of content farms, just about anyone who was even marginally literate could hang out a shingle and pretend to know enough about a topic to write instructions for sites like DIY.com and, especially, eHow.com. We wouldn't be the first to tell you this, but an awful lot of the content on such sites isn't worth the electrons it's printed on. We regularly point out some of the worst dross here, often drawn from the niche sites into which the owner of eHow (Leaf Group) dumps their old content. That includes content like today's nominee, a GargdenGuides. com post entitled "How to Stabilize a Pergola" by one Mary Lougee. 

Changing Bike Tires for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXVIII

flat bicycle tire

The universe of online freelancers apparently shares a critical attribute with the world of job seekers: resumé inflation, We've long since lost count of the "communications" grads who claim they're experts at home improvement but don't know a hawk from a handsaw. To that number, we add people who claim to be experienced bike mechanics or even garden-variety cycling enthusiasts, but don't seem to know a seat post from a chain ring. We're thinking today of WiseGEEK.com contributor Malcolm Tatum, who claims an "interest [in] cycling," although his bona fides seem pretty weak in his  SportsnHobbies.com post, "How do I Change a Bicycle Tire? (with pictures)."

Cutting Ferrite for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXVII

wet tile saw

One hackneyed (and quite sexist) adage told us that we should "never send a boy to do a man's work." All gender stereotypes notwithstanding, we've always assumed that it meant to assign jobs to people who knew how to do them, not to total amateurs. Years of reading rubbish written by eHowians, however, has suggested to us that it means, never send a journalism graduate to do anything other than journalism... or, in the case of Andrew Mayfair, J. D., never send a lawyer to do anything involving power tools. He proved that point in the HomeSteady.com post, "How to Cut Ferrite."

DIY Bifold Doors for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCXXV

louvered bifold doors

When it comes to the world of do-it-yourself projects, few things irritate the staffers at the Antisocial Network more than some yahoo pretending to know a-a-a-all about a topic while writing instructions, yet making a complete mess out of even the most basic information. We're going to look at one such example today; the work of returning DotD Kelly Sundstrom, who blessed the internet with her SFGate.com post, "How to Build DIY Bi-Fold Doors."¹

Job Specs for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMCV

Island cabinet

It's a holiday weekend, so we're gonna keep this one short and... well, according to some people, we're never "sweet." We think the people we call dumbasses deserve the name, mostly because they were so greedy that they lied about their "knowledge"; but some of our more delicate readers think that's mean. Tough. God forbid these people do the same thing on their resumés!  Anyway, today's nominee is Deb M., who went looking for some handyman work by asking her her local Nextdoor.com "community" for recommendations. One of the staffers lives nearby and was flabbergasted by her request for help with a "Counter Top."

Four-Poster to Canopy for Dummies - The Freelance Files MMXCI

four-poster canopy bed

Many of our more... "interesting" nominees can be attributed to freelancers who have done little more than attempt to reword the work of other freelancers; in particular rewriting something that had originally been written by someone who knew nothing about the topic. The further one gets from the original – if there even was an original – the more ridiculous the result. It's pretty obvious that today's nominee, Regina Edwards, knew nothing about "How to Convert My Four Poster Bed Into a Canopy Bed" at Hunker.com; but what's worse is that she based her instructions on a post at another content farm, WiseGEEK.com. The result, as they say, was not pretty. 

Vaulted Ceilings for Dummies

vaulted kitchen ceiling

One question that regularly comes up the meetings where staffers present their "how-to" candidates for the DotD is something along the line of, "Did this person ever wonder why someone googled that question in the first place?" Sometimes it's pretty obvious that the freelancer in question never bothered to think the problem through, either because of ignorance or because of  avarice (probably both). It's hard to tell which is the case in the F. R. R. Mallory eHow.com post, "How to Hang a Pot Rack from a Vaulted Ceiling" – but we rather suspect greed. We'd like to think nobody could be that ignorant, especially someone who claims to have "worked as an architect."

Pez Dispenser Display for Dummies

Pez display case

We've found that some of the worst crapola visited on the 'net by freelancers derives from their attempts to recreate "plans" for DIY woodworking projects on the basis of pictures they've found at eBay or Etsy. We'll be frank: if you don't know how to design and build projects on your own, you sure as heck aren't qualified to tell someone else how to do it. Yet people like eHow.com's Annie Mueller did this on a regular basis, pumping out garbage like her OurPastimes.com post, "How to Make a Pez Display Shelf."

Drill Bits for Dummies

Drill bit designs

After several years of poking fun at the ridiculous and sometimes dangerously stupid twaddle published by freelancers in an endless search for pennies, you'd think that we'd get tired of it. Well, to some extent, we have: we despair that anyone will ever find accurate information about technical topics that's been pounded out by television/film graduates and English lit majors. On the other hand, it never fails to amuse us at just how silly some of the crap they published really is... so we forge on. Today, we've forged to WiseGEEK.com, where we found Paul Cartmell pretending to explain "What Is an Oil Drill Bit?"