Page 18: Evaluate WWW information

Since anybody can easily publish to the web, without the quality control of editors and publishers which are used with regard to print media, it is essential for you to evaluate carefully the information you find on the web. The following criteria can help you:

Purpose

• Are there any particular aims and objectives of the site? Are these clearly stated?
• Who is the intended audience?

Coverage/completeness

• What is the coverage of the site (and is this stated anywhere)?

Breadth

• What is the amount of primary information on the site? 'Primary information' means the information that is held on the one site and is accessed through internal links, while 'secondary information' is what is derived from other sites through external links. You can find out if links are internal by waving the browser over the hypertext link - the URL of the linked site will become visible at the bottom margin of your browser window.

Comprehensiveness

• Does the information cover a range of subjects or cover one subject in its entirety?
• If there are links to other sites, have these been annotated or reviewed in any way? (Descriptive information about the links will add value to the site).

Depth

• Is the information detailed, well-researched?
• Are there bibliographies and references (the hall-marks of good academic research)?

Scope

• Is the information fully available or are there limitations on the coverage? (E.g. electronic journals or books may only give abstracts or sample paragraphs, or the site may still be "under construction".)
• Is there an archive of information?
• Are there pointers to further information, either in print or on the Web?

Authority & reputation

• Who wrote the information and what are their qualifications for doing so e.g. knowledge, expertise, reputation?
• Are the qualifications appropriate to the topic?
• Is the organisation or individual hosting the information reputable or well-known?
• Are any contact details provided? (This would suggest the author is not afraid to be challenged on his/her views/writings).

The URL

• Look at the URL itself as this may give a clue. A search for 'Socrates AND Plato' might bring up the following two essays with identical titles:

http://www.famousuniversity.ac.uk/philosophy-dept/head_of_dept/publications/2nd_int_platoconference/socrates_and_plato.htm
and
http://www.online-for-free.net/freewebhosting/~jo.teenager/my_college_essays/socrates_and_plato.htm

Which of the above essays would be most appropriate for an academic paper?

• See the section below on Dissecting URLs for guidance on this.

Accuracy

• Is the information accurate, as far as your knowlege allows you to judge? Is it consistent with what you have read in other (reputable) sources? However, in the case of theories there may not be a right or wrong answer. If the information is not accurate, is this because of a typing error (lack of care) or is it a deliberate distortion of the facts (prejudice)?
• Is the information biased / too biased? Is this bias personal or institutional?
• Has the information been edited/refereed/reviewed by a third party (quality control)?

Currency and maintenance

• How up-to-date is the information? This may vary in importance depending on the subject area.
• Is there a creation date, a date of the last update, any indication of how frequently the information is updated? However, updates may only refer to part of a site, and the information may not be updated as frequently as promised.
• Do all the hyperlinks work?

Accessibility

• Is access to the site quick, cheap, easy and reliable?
• Are there images on the site? If so, how many and how big are they? Do they impede access? E.g. large images make downloading slower, whereas use of thumbnails can retain the overall effect but make download time a lot faster.
• Is the site accessible to older or text-only browsers (crucial e.g. for Braille devices), or do you need a particular version of a browser? Are plug-ins (e.g. Java, Flash, Shockwave, Acrobat Reader) required?
• Is registration or a username and password required?
• Is the site stable or has it moved location? If it has moved, is there forwarding information or automatic linking to the new site?

Presentation

• Is the site clearly, consistently and logically presented?
• Is the site complex (are there many/too many pages of information to click or scroll through)?
• Are the pages short or long and/or are there quick links to go down the page or take you back to the top of the page, and back to the homepage?
• What sort of language is used on the site (e.g. scientific, scholarly)? Is the language appropriate to the topic?

Ease of use

• Is the site user-friendly or is training required in order to use it?
• Is there a site map, contents page, index, menu, search facility?
• Is there any help information (and is it context sensitive)?

Comparisons

• Is the site valuable in relation to other sources?
• Does the site provide anything unique?

Overall quality

• What is the overall impression of the site?
• Has the site been reviewed or recommended or received any awards? Are these awards appropriate to the topic? (e.g. an academic site does not really gain any more credibility if it has won a "Cool site of the week" award.)

Dissecting URLs (Uniform Resource Locators)

URLs (internet addresses) are integral to the evaluation process. They are hierarchical and read left-to-right.

Example: http://www.netskills.ac.uk/TonicNG/cgi/sesame?detective 

http://	hypertext protocol (There are other protocols such as ftp, telnet etc.)
www.	a www server. Not everything uses www. e.g. http://sosig.ac.uk
netskills.	machine address: this incorporates the server's name
ac.	domain name (e.g. co. or com for commercial, coop. for co-operative societies, edu., ac., sch. for educational, gov. for governmental, org. for non-commercial, e.g. charities, name. for private homepages, mil. for military, nhs. for the Health Service - but beware of domain names that do not follow this pattern!)
uk.	identifies the country where the server is located. (If no country code is given, the default is 'us')
TonicNG/	directory and/or filename

Anything after the slash relates to the "internal" organisation of the site. (In this case we have several directories before accessing the file.)

The length of URLs

The longer and more complicated the URL, the larger the site can be. It is often possible to delete some of the URL after the first slash and so gain access to other parts of a site, e.g. the homepage. The homepage will give a much better impression of what the site is about. This can also be a very useful strategy when access to a particular page fails e.g: http://shr.aaas.org/online.cover.htm. Try to access this site and you will probably fail. But delete everything back to the slash and you can access the site. The new URL will then incorporate 'index' which is often a clue to a homepage.

The tilde ~

This sign often denotes the personal directory of an individual. You may need to be wary as the site will contain personal views, not an official line, but this doesn't mean it is not of good quality.

Formats

The original idea behind the WWW was that web content should be accessible on any computer, regardless what hardware and operating system it has. Browsers which can read 'HTML' (Hypertext Markup Language), the computer language underlying the web, are available for all platforms - Macintosh, DOS/Windows, Unix...

However, webpages using HTML will display with slight differences on various machines. In order to make it possible to transmit files in a way that would retain the original layout in every detail, and, therefore, be suitable for printable documents, the 'Portable Document Format' .(.pdf) was created. .pdf files have to be created with 'Adobe Acrobat', and can be opened with the freely available 'Adobe Acrobat Reader'.

Plug-ins

For more 'multimedia' functionality in web-based resources, a range of 'plug-ins' (i.e. pieces of software that run within a browser) have become available which allow viewing files with special effects (moving images, sound, etc.).

These range from Apple's 'Quicktime' to Macromedia's 'Flash' and 'Shockwave' to 'Java' and 'Javascript'. Although these 'plug-ins' are available free, too, they require a particular minimum specification of hardware and browser. Professional websites often come in both a sophisticated version with added multimedia features, and a plain text-only version which will be readable to older or text-only browsers, Braille devices and the like. This text-only version will also be many times faster to download, and is, therefore, the best option for all sites that do not essentially rely on pictures, sound and animation.

Using the Internet and IT

For more help on using the Internet and evaluating its content you might want to consult the following:

BIZ/Ed : Introducing the Internet - introduction to major Internet concepts, search engines, citation etc.

Internet Detective - a free online tutorial designed to help you develop the critical thinking required for your Internet research.

NetLearn : Resources for learning the Internet - annotated pages of Internet tutorials maintained by the School of Information and Media at The Robert Gordon University.

TONIC : Online Netskills Interactive Course - a web-based learning course on using the Internet

ITLearning - Portal for both students' and educators' resources on anything to do with computers - programming, applications, the Internet.

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