AH3 Life Cycles Assignment Eight Evaluating Websites

Remember back in Lesson 2 we learned about the different domain endings for a website, classified by the 4 big contributors to the Internet: government, education, business and nonprofit organizations. Sometimes those domain name endings don't tell us a lot.	Below are links to 3 different whitehouse websites. One is a government site (.gov), one is a nonprofit (.net), and the last one is a commercial site (.com). Before you click on each one, look at the URL (down in the status bar), and draw some conclusions about what you might find. Ready? Now click on each one and verify your expectations. Site 1 Site 2 Site 3 Did you get what you expected, more or less? Those domain name endings can sometimes give clues, and sometimes make no sense whatsoever.
Those domain names help somewhat to identify the source of the information, the organization responsible for supporting and maintaining the website. Remember those 5 questions? Who is the author of the article Who is supporting the website where the article is posted What is the main purpose of the website Does the author give names of people or research studies or institutions that can be checked independently? How current is the article Here's another site, so controversial that it was taken down at one point, then put up again, and now possibly down again. http://www.martinlutherking.org/ This site had a very definite point of view, and yet there were no definite clues as to the ownership of the site or the identity of the author. There was no mission statement or 'about us' buttons that we could follow, making it very difficult to find out who put up this information, and what, if any, bias they may have. But there was one clue: a tiny link at the bottom of the page, "Hosted by Stormfront". If you clicked on the link, you would have seen that Stormfront is a white nationalist group and they are not flattering to Dr. King. A reporter writing for Huffington Post commented on the nature of the website. For more than 16 years, high school students have been using this site for information about the civil rights leader for their school reports. Looking for the owner of the website helps answer 3 out of 5 of our questions: who is the author (a member of Stormfront), who is supporting the website (Stormfront, a white nationalist group), and what is the purpose of the website (to convince school children that Martin Luther King was a communist, wife-beater, plagiarist, sexual deviant and all-around fraud). I can't find any specific sources of information that I could check, and I can't find a date the website was published.
Unfortunately, there is no handy list of fail-proof ways to determine who the authors of a website are. It's true what they say: anyone can say anything on the Internet. All you have to do is buy a website domain name (or get a free one). There are people who buy up domain names just hoping to resell it to the person or company that might really want it. It takes diligent searching through the website, including clicking on some of the links, to come to any conclusion. But in issues of health, it is extremely important to verify information, through other sites or searches or sources of information. Here's another tricky site: The True but Little Known Facts about Women and AIDS with documentation by Dr. Juatta Lyon Fueul First of all, notice that we can't tell much from the domain name (http://216.92.161.155) , so that's not going to help us in evaluating this page. Click on the link and look around for some other clues. What can you tell me about this page? You might want to scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. ALL the way.

Below are links to articles about egg consumption. Look through them and try to find answers to the questions on the right for each site: Eggs are Worse than Cigarettes? 4 Reasons You Need to Stop Eating Eggs

Who is the author? What makes the author an authority? Is he/she qualified by experience or education to make these claims? Who or what institution is responsible for the website that supports the article? How current is the article? Does the author give details about supporting evidence? Studies? Names of researchers that could be independently checked? Is there a bias, or a hidden agenda?

Snopes.com is a website devoted to checking the facts on urban legends, those stories that circulate widely, are told and re-told with differing details (or exist in multiple versions), and are said to be true. Sometimes, they actually are true. Try searching on the rumors below and tell me if they're true or not. Hint: at least one of them is true. And a sincere apology: Snopes.com seems to be overwhelmed with annoying pop-up ads. Sometimes it's hard to even get to the search box. Good luck. There is now a congressional bill proposing a 1% tax on debit card usage, and it will probably pass. You can help someone get a free mammogram just by clicking on this site. A business traveler in Las Vegas who went to a bar and woke up hours later in a bathtub full of ice cubes and missing a kidney. A man in a motorcycle accident had his head wrenched around by the paramedics because they didn't realize he was wearing his jacket backwards to keep his chest warm. I am deliberately not giving you specific search words, just to give you some practice in picking out key words and designing your own search strategy.

Let's Review

Here's our original list of ways to evaluate a website: Who is the author of the article? Who is supporting the website for the article? What is the main purpose of the website? Does the author give names of people or research studies that can be checked independently? How current is the article? Also, remember to check that domain name ending. Our 4 endings were: .gov - government agencies, including 3 huge federally-funded national libraries. .edu - educational institutions, universities, colleges and research institutions. .com - commercial enterprises, everyone who is trying to sell you something. .org - nonprofit organizations, such as the American Heart Association. And now, we can add these criteria: Always look for an About us type of link. Does that give you any more information? Look for an organization or person who claims responsibility for the site. Then you can do a Google search on that name. If it is a bizarre tale you want to check on, use Snopes.com as the final arbiter. And always scroll to the bottom. Many times, you'll find the owner of the page way down there. None of these tricks will guarantee that you'll be able to spot every spoof or misleading website. But at least it gives you a bunch of tools to do some major weeding.

This is your last lesson for these modules. Hopefully, you've learned a few tricks for finding reliable information and spotting the less-reliable. Now go back to the classroom and take the last quiz (quiz #8). Once again, you get 2 tries, and only the highest score will be saved. Good luck to you all in your AH3 class.

Congratulations!