Questions

Implications

1. Who made this site?

• What are the qualifications of the author or
  the institution that created this site?
  
  --Look for the name of the author, or the name of the organization, institution, agency, or whatever is responsible for the page.
  --An email contact is not enough to assess the author's credentials.
  --If there is no personal author, truncate the URL to locate the publisher or host of the page. You are looking for someone who claims accountability and responsibility for the content.
   
• Is this a personal webpage?
• What is the site domain?

• Personal pages are not necessarily "bad," but you need to investigate the author very carefully.
• For personal pages, there is no publisher or domain owner vouching for the information in the page.
• Domains give you some clues about who made the site.

          --Government sites: look for .gov, .mil, .us, or   
                     other country code
          --Educational sites: look for .edu
          --Nonprofit organizations: look for .org

• An expert will have a different perspective than a non-expert.
• Non-profit organizations may present their information differently than for-profit.

2. What is its purpose?

• Is it to educate, to inform, to sell, to entertain, to support a particular viewpoint...?
• What is the particular viewpoint or bias of the site? What are they trying to argue?

• All web pages are created with a purpose. Considering why a site exists helps you determine what the author's perspective may be.
• Commercial advertisements and pop-ads diminish the credibility of the site.
• Oftentimes, a site is simply an electronic version of a print resource, to make that information more accessible.

3. Where does the
    information come from?

• Where did the author get the information?
  
  --Is there a bibliography, reference list, or footnotes?
  --If there are links to other pages as sources, are they reliable sources?
   
• What kind of evidence do they use to support their claims?

• If the author does not clearly cite where they got information from, DO NOT use that information.
• As in print scholarly journals and books, you should expect documentation of sources.
• Links that don't work or are to other unreliable pages do not help strengthen the credibility of your research.
• Anecdotal evidence relies on stories. Statistical evidence can be interpreted in many ways.

4. How current is the website?

• When was the website produced (posted online)?
• When was it last updated?
• Is it old information on a time-sensitive or evolving topic?
• Are the links up-to-date?

• For some topics you want the most current information (e.g. the election)
• The date can tell you whether the author is still maintaining an interest in the page, or has abandoned it.
• Undated factual or statistical information is no better than anonymous information. DON'T use it.