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
advertisement
• Made by the author of a book for sale on
Amazon