If you are looking for facts, you should be able to find the following information readily:
- Author's Name
- Author's Title or Position
- Author's Organizational Affiliation
- Date of Page Creation or Version
- Author's Contact Information
Another aspect should be accuracy of information, you should look for
- links to original information
- dates that show when information has been updated
- a bibliography or list of links
- information about the criteria for using resources
- indications of bias
One more aspect to check on is the purpose of the website, you should know if the site is
trying to entertain
persuade
inform
The answer to this should be obvious, the site should state its purpose and its intended audience
Overall, it is up to the person using the internet to be careful, and knowledgeable about the websites and web-sources they use. When using an internet source, one should be able to clearly defend that decision by havaing answers to the questions asked above or take a chance on having misinformation or passing on misinformation to others!
To help answer my question I used: http://owl.english.purdue.edu/, a very reputable resource with plenty of contact information. Which is intended for the education of others.
This is a great list of criteria. Reading them over prompts me to think about my criteria, not in theory but in practice. I have lately been using diigo as a collection site for links. But I mainly use it as temporary storage for links like "oh this looks like it might be useful" with high hopes of some day spending time at the site to do a good evaluation. Which never seems to happen. A lot of the Internet seems to be built on trust, and if a friend trusts it then I can too (the web of trust). But I can't so much vouch for the validity or quality of the sites in my diigo -- only that they looked interesting to me at first glance. I think this is related to your post.
ReplyDeletejd