Roofs, Soffits, and Eaves for the Dummy Homeowner

Here's what eaves are, Vic!

From time to time even the Antisocial Network's DIYer in chief needs a little help with some home repair or maintenance task she's never attempted before. That usually means a trip to the bookshelf, where there's a DIY section that rivals that of many small-town libraries (we've seen it). If that doesn't work, though, she'll reluctantly turn to the 'net, where you can be sure there are hundreds if not thousands of blog posts and videos. Choosing the best isn't a matter that should be left up to google search, however, because you just might run across utter bull – and that's no help. By "utter bull," we mean the kind of rubbish posted by Victor Fonseca to eHow.com in "How to Repair Eaves and Roofs."

Given the 300-500 word format of most Demand Media answers and the extraordinary breadth of the topic, we didn't expect much from Victor. We though perhaps an outline of procedures... what we didn't expect was complete and utter garbage (although the guy was a PolySci major in college – need we say more?) Fonseca started off in a hole with this inane statement:

Kelvin and Absolute Zero for Physics Dummies

Comparison of temperature scales: F, C, and K

At our Friday staff meeting, one of the research crew suggested that we take another look at our files -- they're voluminous, to be sure -- of other dumbass posts written by some of our more prolific awardees. These folks are like the Michael Phelpses or the Meryl Streeps of stupidity... although perhaps we should call them our Susan Luccis, since they're perennial losers. That being said, we pulled out the file of the most prolific of all, Houstonian Joan Whetzel, to see what she had posted to her HubPages.com account. That's where we found he paean to temperature scales, "Absolute Shiv-v-ving in Absolute Zero."¹ Jeez, Joan, shouldn't you have said "shiv-v-vering"? Dumbass...

Thermostat Installation for DIY Dummies

Thermostat wiring

Unless the situation is pretty dire, we suspect most of you wouldn't go next door and ask a neighbor to stop mowing his lawn and take out your kid's appendix; ditto with writing you a new will. Doctors and lawyers go through extensive training for a reason – and, for that matter, so do professional plumbers and electricians. If and when we do attempt home repairs, we certainly want advice and instructions from an experienced person (preferably professional) instead of someone who... well, someone who's obviously never done the job. You know, someone like Sally Odum, who we caught pretending to know "How to install a new thermostat" at the site called Catalogs.com (formerly WhoWhatWhenWhereWhyHowWhatever or something like that).

We get the definite impression Sally's never installed a new thermostat herself (at best, perhaps she was around while her "hubby"¹ installed one) based on some of her dumber misinformation. She begins by informing her readers that,

Slash and Burn, Dummies!

There's a slash right there on the keyboard, Heather!

The researcher staff here at the Antisocial Network have long understood that freelancers figure they're getting paid by the word. Even when they're paid by the chunk of (mis)information by sites like the Demand Media farms, they're still expected to provide a minimum number of words just so they can meet some mythical SEO benchmark. That's why so many eHow answers seem to get to the point by going 'round Robin Hood's barn instead of in a short, direct statement. Of course, some of their contributors don't know the short, direct statement. We're thinking of folks like Filonia LeChat (real name Heather Brautman), who gave a long, complex answer to a simple (rather stupid) question for eHow.com in "How to Make a Straight Slash in Word."¹

Cell Phone Operation for Dummies

cell phone network schematic

If there's a kid (or an insatiably curious grownup) in your life, you really should have a copy of some version of David Macaulay's The Way Things Work around the house. It's well written and profusely illustrated and provides simple discussions of the principles by which everyday objects function. On the other hand, you could just look it up on the internet; however, if you do that chances are fairly good that, now that Google no longer allows you to preferentially block crap sites, you'll end up getting information from a DotD at eHow.com; someone like Alicia Bodine, who took time off from being a self-described cooking guru to answer (not really) the burning question, "How Does a Cell Phone Work?"¹ for ItStillWorks.com.

Recharging Air Conditioners for Dummies

Parts of an Auto Air Conditioner

In their research into the care and feeding of the freelance dumbass, the staff of the Antisocial Network have noticed that the species has several habits that are typical enough to identify one as a member. Chief among these habits is the rewording of authoritative sources in a vain attempt to avoid being nailed for plagiarism; as a result examples are often munged up and critical steps of procedures get omitted. That's what's happened with today's dumbass, already a two-time winner of the DotD award: he's eHow.com's Seth Amery, found here performing a poor rewrite of the instructions for "How to Re-Gas an Air Conditioner."¹

Designing a Home for Dummies

A Small house plan

At the Antisocial Network offices, we spend a portion of each day hoping to expose the sort of factual rubbish that arises when greed intersects stupidity in the form of internet freelancers. Although the model is dead as a doornail now, at one point just about anyone could pick up a few bucks pretending to be 1) a professional writer and 2) knowledgeable on some topic or other; and not necessarily number two. Once those criteria had been met, the mother lode of misinformation, eHow, would pay "contributors" flat fees to answer questions harvested from the internet. They didn't pay well, but the contributors generally didn't deserve what little they got. Take, for example, Kelly Sundstrom, seen here attempting to explain "How to Make a Floor Plan on the Computer" (moved to the niche site ItStillWorks.com, and then deleted¹).