Charging a Car Battery for Dummies

Car Battery Charger hookup

Sometimes one of our research team will read through an online post, think "OK," and move on to the next one; only to realize a moment or two later that there was some major dumbassery buried within the text. That happened recently when one of the kids was browsing the work of longtime eHowian Larry Parr: she came across one of Parr's posts titled "How to Charge a New Car Battery"¹ at Leaf Group's niche site OurPastimes.com. And about two articles later, she suddenly realized that Larry's a dumbass...

Shortening a Table for Dummies

wobbly table

Self-appointed freelance "experts": you gotta love 'em, especially the ones who claim to be "award-winning." You always wonder, what awards have these people won? the award of having mommy put your latest artwork up in the Amana Gallery when you were seven, perhaps? Whatever the case, we try to never fall for the self-hype. such as that claimed by "award-winning designer" Gina Samarotto (who's also a freelance journalist? and has time to win design awards? s-u-u-ure...) when she attempted to impress people with her design skills in "How to Lower the Height of a Table"¹ for Leaf Group's TheBump.com.

The Wonders of Plywood, the Dummies Version

construction of plywood

Back in about 2011, Google changed their search algorithm to give lower search rank to content farms. As a result, many of those sites; like Associated Content, helium, BrightHub and Squidoo; withered and died. Although arguably the worst offender of all, eHow.com managed to stay afloat by tightening their "standards"; though any tightening was mainly in the area of format; not content quality¹. Much of their earliest content, rubbish vomited up by total incompetents, remains online; as is obvious from today's DotD entry, Andrew DeWitt and his amazing "Advantages of Plywood."²

Same Old Oil Misinformation, Different Dummy

Parts of a drilling rig

It's been quite a while since our staffers 1) skewered some idiot from HubPages.com and 2) raked some fool over the coals for misinformation about the oil business. Today, we're gonna rectify that long silence: the victim of the day is some character who publishes his "hubs" under the handle tjar12, but a little googling finds he's a guy by the name of Tim Archbold. We have no idea why he thinks he's knowledgeable about "Oil Exploration and Drilling - How is Oil Found?"; but the sad fact is that he isn't...

Tubular Locks for Dummies

The keyhole of a tubular lock

There's no doubt about it: here at the Antisocial Network we get a lot of headaches attempting to read the questionable content of some of our DotD candidates. While some of them make mistakes because they simply don't have the background necessary to write about their topics, a few seem to live in a place where "alternate facts" are perfectly acceptable. Take, for instance, eHowian Alec Preble: one of his favorite tricks is to provide a general (and probably wrong) "solution" to a specific question, while citing an offline reference. The English BA pretended to know "How to Install a Tubular Lock"¹ for eHow.com when in reality he had no idea how to install a lock at all.

Finding Your Altitude for Dummies

Analog altimeter

It never ceases to amaze our researchers just how... let's be nice and say "clueless"... some of the freelancers out there actually are. Some, we fear, are willfully ignorant; a category that seems to include many who "answer" questions at eHow.com. We think that may be why today's DotD candidate, one Jonra Springs, chose to address "How Do You Measure Altitude?"¹ in a rather clumsy (and not terribly accurate) fashion. Then again, it might simply be because Springs knew even less than the person asking the question.

Now for our money (which isn't much), the person asking that question isn't looking for instructions on using an altimeter; but that's what they got. Sadly, Jonra couldn't even get that right, rolling out such ludicrous claims as

Camry Cooling Systems, the Dummy Version

Yup, just slap your wrench on, right Emile?

You find ectoplasmic beings roaming your house, who you gonna call? Ghostbusters, of course! You discover that the radiator fan on your car doesn't run, who you gonna call? Well, as far as we know there's no "fanbusters" out there, so you're probably going to look for an auto mechanic. We know we'd prefer to get our DIY car-fixing advice from someone with grease under his nails instead of a guy who thinks he's a "professional writer" because he published in a student newspaper... but eHow.com let Emile Heskey (no, not the famous footballer) pretend to help you solve your problem in "The Cooling Fans Won't Run in a Camry."¹ Bad choice, eHow...