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I hope you are fine and in good health.
I am doing a research on "Evaluating the information on web". As you all know that web is a river of information, but there are a number of sites which are publishing wrong information (intentionally or unintentionally) You guys are IT gurus and know how to evaluate a website. Can you give me some tips?
My point is, wouldn't you have to become an expert at everything in order to determine what info is inaccurate? Or did I misunderstand your question.
lawman
lawman
Second, there may not be agreement on what is accurate. A good example might be NYTimes.com. This site, published by the venerable newspaper, might be considered accurate and authoritative by many people. However, some readers might consider them considerably biased toward a liberal political viewpoint. Further, they just had a major scandal in which a reporter fabricated many stories. Even the guy's editor thought the stories were factual.
In short, I don't know of any kind of analysis that would let you determine how correct a particular site is. You might be able to compare a site to major "mainstream" resources, but even there one might run into disagreements. Good luck... :)
But I do have a few pointers which I use to judge websites - I tend not to trust a website if I notice any of the following:
1) No about us/contact us page (i.e. information is anonymous)
2) If the website says anything like "All this stuff is really true!" or (as I saw recently) "This website is all original and is not copied off another website". I trust these sites less because they are clearly amateur sites, but also because I am a grammar snob.
3) If any of the articles make reference to the advertisers
So I would say, yes, there are ways of evaluating a website in a negative way. Don't know any ways of ensuring a website's information is real though. As Lawman says, even the New York Times can't get it right.
The medium in which information is displayed is irrelevant. Critical thinking still applies. Get used to using truth tables and a whole new world will open up.
This tutorial has helped me to start the research on "Evaluating the information on net" I am looking for more tips.
[edited by: rcjordan at 9:31 pm (utc) on June 17, 2003]
[edit reason] no urls, please [/edit]
As Lawman says, even the New York Times can't get it right.
Lawman mighta thunk it, but lawman didn't say it. :)
The same principles apply as if you were studying history - any subject which involves human opinion and judgement has no definite 'truth' - you have to decide (with your evaluation) what is the most accurate. It's helpful to try and find 'authorative' sources. So if you're evaluating an SEO site, verify their claims with webmasterworld ;)
inaccurate information from webmasterworld, are you going to tart every word that you have read from these fora, as being representative of webmasterworld? There are thousands of members, and everyone has a view, and what was true yesterday may not be today, and you've always got the viewpoint itself , which for some who are international SEO/SEM survivalists, others are just readers and posters, some are jokers, and then there is me, i just post to misinform myself and everyone else.
The sites that you describe as being unworthy of your viewing, pretty much own the web, unless i am very much mistaken.
lawman
I think it is very industry specific, for a lot of industries where information is easy to come by - yes i would agree, however they're industries where information is gold dust, and very few have it and a heck of lot want to pretend via their sites, that they know all about it. I percieve it as a bit of a problem with the medium of the web, but i rejoice in the fact that the pretenders get their commupance when the shots are called.
Straight talk - brand - a touch of professionalism without the anal uppety corporate, don't come near me side is the best approach.
Lawman,
you may actually be right about that, but hey we can never no the truth!
<edit> one day i will buy a dictionary for my office at home -apologies about spelling mistakes </edit>
Agreed, although I think that this can just make the evaluation more difficult, but not impossible.
It also depends on the depth of the evaluation. Anyone with even basic web searching skills is evaluating information all the time. For example search Google for Evaluating the information on web [google.com].
There are quite a few useful looking sites on the first page (there's even a dmoz category, as it's a common essay ;)). But they won't all be of the same quality. I judge websites quickly and cynically, so my evaluation is often over as instinctively hit the <-- button.
>>Did you ever find a website which was giving wrong information?
Yeah, I was reading CNN news today in fact ;)
i'd like to know how do you find out how much money other sites are making? ;)
We actually have scale (proprietary, so don't ask) that ranks certain Web properties by their "perceived reliability." The data is based upon qualitative data gathered in survey research.
If your goal is to get the word out about your product or service, you need to be focusing on reliable sources.
And, as a former journalist, I can say that there are two sides to every story. So sometimes even if you think it's wrong, it may be right to someone else.
