Criteria

photo by Tony

Hi Girls,

I think that there should be some criteria to establish whether a site – and its information – is good or not. This is true, not only for virtual documents, but also for real ones.
Of course, with paper books it’s easier because you know the author and the publisher and you can check their credentials and some reviews. But what about web sites?
Most of the times you don’t even know the author. I think that we should apply many criteria:

- you should find the home page of your document and see who is the responsible for that web site. For example: you are searching for “Baudelaire” for your thesis. You find three different sites written by a person fond of literature, by a French Academy of Literature and by a group of students who published their work in a blog. Does it make any difference?
- You should take into consideration the date of birth of the site. I mean, web sites open and close so easily, how could you rely on a site which might be no longer there in a few days?
- You should use Google (or any other search engine). Having said that Google has many limits, it works as a sort of filter.
- You should check in del.icio.us. You can’t only rely on peer rating but it can help you to see the degree of approval of a wide public. I mean, if many people bookmark a site, there must be a reason!
- You should check if the site is updated or not. Thanks to feeds you can easily do that.

All these criteria should work together: only the combination of all of them will give, as a result, a good site. Hopefully!

…15 minutes later …

I read all the documents provided by Sarah. The universities pointed out more or less the same criteria I mentioned before. However, I’d like to cite some of their remarks:
- Is there a reference list or bibliography of corroborative evidence? This is quite important because you can see the sources of the information you found.
- Is the author or contact person listed with addresses (street, e-mail)? This is an indication of reliability. If there are some problems you can contact a physical person.
- Is this information unique or has it been copied? Good observation, but it’s quite difficult to find it out if the site doesn’t mention the sources.
- Is anything being sold? As a consequence, which is the purpose of the site?

Well, I realized that to establish some good criteria is a very demanding task. I’m curious to know your impressions.
Stefania