- Most material is copied from somewhere. But where? The Internet being what it is – unregulated, easy to use, and open to everyone – people often feel free to copy material they find elsewhere, often without providing a citation or other attribution. Often that's just because they figure someone else knows best, and said it so well – why bother to write something original? Often one source copies from another that copied from another, until you can't figure out who said it first. So how do you know that whoever it was knew what he was talking about?
You may see something that looks good, presented on a site that has no obvious bias, but you have no easy way of knowing whether it came originally from someone else that:
- was careless;
- did have a strong bias on the issue;
- edited poorly; or
- did say it, but in a context where it was really about something else entirely.
As in "traditional" research, look for the source!
- The majority isn't any more reliable than the minority. If you can't figure out what the source of the information is, don't assume it's right no matter how many places you see it repeated. See rule #1: if one person copied it, probably a few hundred others did too! Some of them may even have rephrased it, so that it looks original, or at least as if they actually thought about it. If a thousand people say it on the Internet, it has no more weight than if one does, unless you know why they all say it.
- Bad writing doesn't always mean bad information – but it's a pretty good hint. If the site uses words incorrectly, or shows bad spelling and grammar; if it is poorly organized; if the writing is more argumentative than balanced; or especially if it uses sarcastic, abusive, or incoherent phrasing, what does it tell you? Possibly that the writer did not care enough about accuracy to proofread his/her work or ask someone else to do so. Yes, there are people out there with something useful and important to say who write poorly (and who don't even know that they write poorly); but when a writer can't (or won't) use a dictionary, a thesaurus, or even a spellchecker, why assume he checked his facts any better?
- Watch out for "popular searches" and other automated pages. A lot of pages are put together by automated means, using software "robots" that look for how many times people search for certain information. The popular "hits" are then collated into what looks like a specialized index, until you start trying to use it – then you find that most of the results have nothing to do with what you want. Signs of an auto-generated site:
- long lists and small print
- lots of ads
- any entries that are clearly advertising, or clearly unrelated
- phrases like "popular searches" or "popular sites"
- many pages to choose from, just by number
- usually, the word "Yahoo!"
Look for sites that appear to have been designed by people – people who are interested in the subject itself, not just interested in making Web pages.
- Know how to use Wikipedia. That's not "use Wikipedia" but "know how to use Wikipedia." It can be extremely useful if you know its limits and pay good attention to them. If you don't, you may be better off avoiding it.
Wikipedia is essentially a do-it-yourself encyclopedia. All articles are contributed by people who just happen to have an interest and access to the Internet. That's all – just interest and Internet access. They may have considerable expertise, or none at all. They may have a careful, scholarly approach or a strong personal bias. (Thus you can't ignore the possibility of deliberate fraud; some people think this is fun or useful "social engineering." For a notable example, see this article.)
The articles are then edited and re-edited by other people who think they are improving them. (I've contributed to a couple myself.) They may not be improvements.
Wikipedia contains a huge amount of information (more than the Encyclopedia Britannica, for instance), and a high percentage of what you will find on any random topic is probably right. Some of the articles are astonishingly good, considering that's it's all the result of volunteer effort. In part, that's because there are a lot of people looking at each article – at least if it's an article on a popular topic, such as world history, entertainment, science, philosophy, interesting people, traditional cultural matters, and the like. When someone gets something wrong – even very slightly wrong – a few dozen people will quickly jump on it with their corrections; and those who make corrections usually improve the quality. But that is only true of popular topics; and even then, there is absolutely no guarantee as to any line in any article at any given time.
Here are some pointers to remember when using Wikipedia:
- Consider the nature of the topic. The more popular a topic is with people who spend a lot of time on computers on the Internet, the more often it is viewed and the more likely it is to be changed – for the better or the worse.
- Jump around, but remember where you came from. One of the great values of the system is the ability to cross-link one topic to another. In a well-written article, this allows you easily to check and compare sources and different approaches to an issue. It can also get you lost, so you forget where you found what you were really looking for.
- Be aware of the History and Discussion tabs at the top of the article. They tell you what changes have occurred (once you learn how to read them properly). Do not assume that an article with very few changes must be perfect – assume instead that very few people have taken an interest in it, so any errors the original author included are probably still there. If you are unsure of a statement you see in an article, and it was just added recently (or is on an obscure topic), go look somewhere else.
- Be wary of articles on current affairs, especially if they change often. It is not at all unheard of for people to make changes in articles for marketing reasons, or because they or their employers are involved in a lawsuit on the subject.
- Really do check citations. Responsible writers either provide sources, or insert "<citation needed>" if they think their information is correct but can't find the source right now. But do check them; you may find the citation is to another Web page that you have no particular reason to trust! (See rules 1 and 2.)
- Do us all a favor and don't contribute if you are just relying on other Web pages for your own information!
- Know how to use Google. OK, I said it already, so you know I really mean know how. (And whatever I say here goes for other general search engines too.) Searching is a skill you may have to develop. A few hints:
- Check your spelling. If you misspell what you are looking for, you may get results anyway – because others have misspelled it too. But they probably aren't the best results!
- Keep phrases together in "double quotes" if you're pretty sure they will turn up that way – but try other ways too, because you may be wrong. For instance, a phrase may be broken up across pages or paragraphs by the way someone formatted a Web page.
- If you get too many (or too few) results, look at a few of them and figure out why. Are most of them on an unrelated subject? Find some key words that you would never find on the pages you're really looking for, and exclude them; or add key words you can count on finding. For instance, if you are looking for information on Boxers, the breed of dog, you might want to search for boxer +breed -rebellion -middleweight -shorts (note the plus and minus signs), to exclude some pages on other kinds of boxers.
- Ignore "sponsored sites" unless you are really looking for marketing. No, you can't really find peace and happiness at Amazon.com and eBay.
- Almost anything you search for might be the name of a rock music group or album. Yes, you can find Nirvana at Amazon.com, but was that the one you were searching for?
- Use their Help Center for more guidance.
- Expect "urban legends" everywhere. If something sounds really cool, odds are pretty good it's just a story. There are some useful sites on the Web that try to identify hoaxes and urban legends, such as:
Use them!
– Oh, and by the way, if you see a story that says it was verified by one of these, or by some other reputable source – go look. It isn't always true.
- Look for resources put together by and for educators, colleges, and libaries. They are generally carefully reviewed and edited. But note carefully – this does not mean everything you find on a school (.edu) site or everything labeled as "educational." Every professor and every college student may have a Web page on a college site that looks serious and scholarly. Some of them are not very scholarly at all. And remember, college professors do have their own biases and pet theories. (After all, the Web is the one place you can get "published" without peer review, editing, or funding. This applies to every crackpot who can't get anyone to print his book – including the ones on school faculties.) But lists of resources compiled by official college departments are usually done with care and can be very good guides.
Some others to consider:
There are lots more, of course.
- Use U.S. Government sources for Government information. You may not trust the Government for unbiased, reliable information on many topics – it would be nice to think that political goals play no role in what information is presented, but that is not always true – but if you want to know how many employees a given agency has, or what its budget is, or what laws control its activities, go to the source. The information they give is at least as likely to be accurate as that from other sources. A few notably useful sites:
- Go to a real library. Everything you ever wanted to know is not on the Web – just what someone with a computer and some neat-o web page authoring software thought you should know.
- Libraries have real books, that someone actually wrote and someone else – someone with relevant training, and a limited budget – deliberately chose to buy.
- They have librarians who can show you the right shelf before you waste a couple of hours searching somewhere else.
- Once you're there, you don't have to weed through a huge pile of junk to find the one item that's worth reading – they didn't buy most of the junk.
- Once you get up from your computer, you will find yourself in this thing called the Real World. You might see some people to talk to. You might even get a little fresh air on the way! Don't forget to look both ways before crossing . . . .
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