3b. Evaluate Popular Sources
Double-Check Your Sources
The internet offers the most convenient source of information but also the widest possible range of quality. There is no sure-fire way to make sure your sources, especially sources from the web, are correct, but following the instructions here will help you avoid hoaxes or other dubious sources.
Basics of Web Evaluation
In , Jim Kapoun proposed five key criteria.
Some things on the web have changed, but most of his rules are still good. Here is a summary of his suggestions:
What’s Changed
A few things are different today from when Kapoun made his table:
Amount of advertising is, at best, a slender indicator.
Most websites depend on advertising revenue, and even legitimate news sites have extensive ads. Extremely heavy advertising, however, may still indicate poor quality.
A paywall does not indicate poor quality.
Much good information is free, but most academic journals and some prominent news sites require subscriptions or payment.
The domains .net and .org are no longer indicators of quality.
Their information may be bad or good. However, .edu indicates an educational institution, usually a university, and .gov is exclusive to U.S. government organizations.
The webmaster is unimportant.
Most websites are hosted by organizations otherwise unassociated with their content. The author and publisher are who matter.
Few websites require special software.
Flash, used for video, is deprecated, as are most similar proprietary media plugins. Modern browsers are designed to handle almost any site; if a site requires a plugin or recommends a particular browser, it (or at least its structure) is probably out of date.
What Hasn’t Changed
And some things are the same:
You should know who produced the information.
You should be able to identify a specific author or organization that made the content. Search elsewhere on the web for this individual or organization’s credentials.
You should know if the information is current.
Some indication of the date of publication (not the same as a copyright date) should be available. Numerous dead links are a sign that a page is out of date.
Your source should cite its sources.
Most information on the web is second- or third-hand. A good website should cite its sources if it isn’t a well-known authority.
You should find other sources.
The best way to tell if information is reliable is to get it from more than one source. If information is shoddy or a site is dubious, someone else has probably criticized it already. But even if your information is good, multiple sources can give you more perspectives.
How to Find a Date
On the web, as in the real world, a date can be hard to find.
If the date of publication is not readily visible, try these techniques, taken from Malik ():
Scan the page. The date may be present but not where you expect it. Look closely.
Look at the URL. Some web pages, especially blogs, will have the date of an article built into the URL, so look at your brower’s address bar.
Check the sitemap. Typically, a website has an XML sitemap located at [website URL]/sitemap.xml. This file may reveal dates when the pages were last modified.
Look at the source code. In most browsers, you can right-click on a webpage and select View page source to see the raw HTML. In the
<head>section, you may find metadata telling you when the page was published.Use the Wayback Machine. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine may have cached versions of the page. The first indexed version may be close to the publication date.
Use Google. Google’s date of indexing is usually close to the publication date.
Type inurl: into Google search, followed by the address of the webpage in question.
Once you get the search results, move your cursor to the end of the URL in your address bar and add &as_qdr=y15.
When you hit enter, Google should show you results with indexing dates.
Note: Many web pages have copyright dates in their footers. The copyright date is not a date of publication and may automatically update on a yearly basis.
Note. From “How to Evaluate Websites: A Guide for Teachers and Students (Free Poster),” by K. Morris, , Kathleen Morris: Primary Tech (https://www