Monday, January 16, 2006
Most newspaper articles, at least, are fact-checked by editors, but any fool can post anything on the Internet and be certain that somewhere another fool will read and believe it. You owe it to the people who will make use of research you do on the Internet to make certain you get the facts straight.
You can start by examining the Web site itself. A sloppy Web site with grammatical errors and many misspellings is automatically suspect. Next, consider the motive of the people who constructed the Web site. Many sites have a commercial motive. Others are pushing a political agenda.
News about technology and political news, for example, gets stale quickly. Online articles should be marked with the date of publication in plain display.. A Web page with a number of dead links — hyperlinks that lead nowhere — is most assuredly out of date and doesn't deserve your attention.
Maybe the best way to judge whether information at a Web site is valid is to use your intuition. What does your gut tell you? When someone stops you on the sidewalk with a long tale about needing a quarter to make a phone call because the car has broken down on account of the rain, et cetera, et cetera, you can usually tell right away whether you're being conned. You just know. The same is true when judging the validity of a Web site.
You can start by examining the Web site itself. A sloppy Web site with grammatical errors and many misspellings is automatically suspect. Next, consider the motive of the people who constructed the Web site. Many sites have a commercial motive. Others are pushing a political agenda.
News about technology and political news, for example, gets stale quickly. Online articles should be marked with the date of publication in plain display.. A Web page with a number of dead links — hyperlinks that lead nowhere — is most assuredly out of date and doesn't deserve your attention.
Maybe the best way to judge whether information at a Web site is valid is to use your intuition. What does your gut tell you? When someone stops you on the sidewalk with a long tale about needing a quarter to make a phone call because the car has broken down on account of the rain, et cetera, et cetera, you can usually tell right away whether you're being conned. You just know. The same is true when judging the validity of a Web site.
