WEBSITE VALIDIT Y

D O I N G Q U A L I T Y R E S E A R C H

M R . E R F U RT H , 2 0 1 6

TODAY’S GOAL

• Students can determine the validity and value of information they find on the open internet

while researching.

OPEN WEB VS. PAID RESOURCES

PAID RESOURCES

• District-purchased

– Curated

– Valid for research

– Peer-reviewed (in many cases)

THE OPEN WEB

• Total free for all

– Good? Bad?

• Anyone can post anything

– It can look real good, too

• No guarantees about veracity of

information

T H E O P E N W E B

Is how we end up with

some

wonderful cultural artifacts

“Memes” or whatever

EASY CLUES

TRUSTWORTHY WEBSITE

• A name you (and most people) recognize

– New York Times, TIME, History.com, etc.

• Well organized, ideally shows a physical

address

• Allows you to contact the people behind

the website

NEEDS MORE VERIFICATION

• Has the same phrase repeated throughout

the page

– Probably the search term you used

• Tons of advertisements

• URL is a bit suspicious

– Ex: cancer-treatment-science.com, real-

history.com

• Wikipedia

SEO TRAPS

WHAT IS SEO?

• Search Engine Optimization

• Ways for companies to get their websites

at the top of Google

– Doesn’t matter if they’re any good

• Copy Writers are not historians!

– Little experience

– “Content generators”

– Check their sources!!!

HOW DO I SPOT IT?

• Bad editing

• Repeated keywords

– “The World War II civilians suffering from World War II invasions were often frustrated with their nations’ WWII militaries…”

• URL with repeated keywords or hyphens

– www.worldwarii-encyclopedia-stuff.com/world-war-ii/wwii/civilians

• “You won’t believe what happened next!”

– Clickbait/linkbait

I T ’ S E A S Y TO

P O S T A N Y T H I N G

O N L I N E .

It only costs about $10/year

for the domain, then maybe

$5/month for the hostin

Make your intelligence

worth more

than a cheap website!

YOU DESERVE BETTER

“TLDS” (TOP LEVEL DOMAINS)

.COM, .ORG, .NET, . INFO, ETC.

• Anyone can register one of these for

nearly no cost at all

• There is no checking by ICANN for

reputation before selling domains

• Doubt everything you see! All the time!

.EDU, .GOV, .MIL

• Strict requirements to get a domain under

.edu

– Must be an educational institution

• .gov is all United States government

– Other governments have their own tld’s

• .mil – only the US Military

• Careful with pages with a ~

– They’re user pages

OT H E R T L D S

.it, .tv, .so, .at, .co.uk, .uk, .de… all

other countries. Varying

requirements to register.

And now, just about every English

word is available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of

_Internet_top-level_domains

“ASK” WEBSITES

YAHOO ANSWERS, ASK.COM…

• Really, guys?

• Mostly people copying their homework

questions to get them answered by people

who don’t know

• https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/ind

ex?qid=20090506144607AAlxf7F

– Value of information?

– Validity of information?

ESPECIALLY CONTROVERSY!

• For example, marijuana:

– https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101231003312AAjZsht

• Also, beware anything that says ‘studies suggest’

• You’re victim to “confirmation bias” more often than you realize

In short – they’re worthless!

EVALUATING A SITE DIRECTLY

WHO? WHAT? WHERE?

• Who made this website?

– What organization is behind it?

– Is it crazy uncle Ted, or is it the US Navy? Check it out!

• What is on the site?

– Check out other articles

– What is the website’s purpose?

• Where is it?

– TLDs, country of origin

WHEN? WHY?

• When was this page made?

– Recent articles are more valuable to

research – knowledge changes over time

– If you can’t find a date… doubt the page!

• Why was the page made?

– If it’s trying to convince you of something,

it’s biased

• Don’t trust it – especially if it convinced you!

GETTING OUR HANDS COVERED IN HTML

• A Case Study

– Trying to learn about the Illuminati

– Google!

• “real illuminati story”

– Several resources

• http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam481/grou

pa/illumhist.html

• Messing with the URL

– Delete parts of it – get to the bottom of

that page, whether they gave you a link or

not

• Another Case Study (more Illuminati)

– Shady website

– Had lots of information

• Appeared legitimate

• Many details, historical references, etc.

– Domain whois

• Revealed that the website was an elaborate

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• Made by the author of a book for sale on

Amazon