Website Evaluations

Good stuff vs Bad stuff

History 2d1

Question…

Publishers of many great books include Penguin, HarperCollins, Bantam, etc.

Name a publisher for Internet material.

Answer…

• Anyone can publish anything to the Internet. We can all be publishers.

• That’s a good thing…that’s a bad thing.

Why?

-good…you can find anything on the Internet

-bad…people can publish falsehoods or unreliable information.

Your responsibility…

• To ensure that all the resources you use are reliable/reputable, including web resources

• To be critical about who is telling you what. To question. To think, think, think.

Question…

- How do you search for material on the Internet? What search tool do you use?

Answer: probably Google

Check this out…

Sites on “women aids facts”

Site #1 Reliable?

Site #2 Reliable?

Now plug in a Google search for “women aids facts”

Look at the hits

Google ain’t God

• Although Google is a good search engine, it does NOT sift through the Internet and provide only “good” sites.

That job is yours!

How to Evaluate Websites…How do I know if a website is reliable or

not?

Answer: it’s not easy. Many websites are made to look really good, and they do fool us.

- Do the best you can using some or all of the following indicators…

Check the URL

• Is it someone’s personal page?

(look for ~ or % or “users” or “members”)• domain .com (commercial)

.gov (government)

.net (network infrastructure)

.org (organization)

.edu (education)

Is the domain appropriate for the content?

Who is responsible for the site?

• Is there an author?– Can I contact the author with an e-mail address or

phone number provided?

• Is the author an authority in the subject? What are his credentials? Is he controversial?

• Is there a sponsor for the site? Reputable?

NOTE: you may have to truncate back to home page to find the author or check for an “about us” button (or something like that).

• You should look up the author in Google

Why is the site on the Net??

• To give information, to instruct

• To sell us something (to make money)

• To persuade us

- Is it free of bias??

Dated??

• When was the page/site published or last updated?– Should be able to find this info. at top or

bottom of page.– May have to truncate back to find it

• Is the date current enough?• If no date is found, should you trust the

site?

Links…

• Are the links on the page appropriate for the subject?

• Do they all work (are they up to date) or are they dead links?

• Who links to the page/site you are using

(using Google, search “link: type the URL”

Is information altered?

• Is information a primary source available via PDF?

• Is information summarized or re-typed by author? Is it reputable?– If so, why?– Has it been altered?– Are there errors?

Quality of Information

• Is the information given useful, valuable, worth having?

• Is the info. Detailed and in-depth

What has been on the site in the past? What did it look like?

• Check the content of the site from months or years ago

- Has it always been reliable? Has it changed recently…for the worse?

• Use “Way Back Machine” to investigate

example: tsn.ca (look at first pages)

sportsnet.ca