Evaluating Philosophy Web Sites
In our highly digitized world, it is very tempting to think that everything is on the Internet. This is not true now, nor will it be true in the foreseeable future. However, there are many very useful, research-quality web sites available to you. Unfortunately, there are also a lot of webs sites that offer very inaccurate, misleading or just confused information.
Whenever you use books or periodicals in the AVC library you can be assured that the information in those materials has been reviewed by qualified editors for accuracy, spelling, grammar, reliability etc. You can trust that these books and periodicals are appropriate for your term paper. However, when it comes to the Internet, this is not the case. Please remember: No one is in charge of the World Wide Web or the Internet. No one is checking to see whether the information you find is accurate, factual or written by a qualified expert. When it comes to the Internet, YOU are the editor, YOU are the one who evaluates whether the material presented on the web site is appropriate for your research paper. This part of our presentation will teach you how to select useful web sites from those that should not be used for writing term papers.
There are five evaluation criteria that will help you determine the credibility of Internet sources:
Authority
Accuracy
Objectivity
Currency
Coverage
Below you will see an example below of a reputable site written by a university professor for NASA. As you read the following criteria, note how many of these criteria are satisfied by the example.
Authority
Who is responsible for the contents of the page? Can you find the name of the author or organization that produced the page? Is there a way to contact the author by e-mail? What are the author's qualifications? If the site concerns a philosophical topic, does the author have a degree or degrees in philosophy? Anyone can publish anything on the Internet, regardless of his/her qualifications. You may be reading an article by a philosopher, an amateur interested in philosophy or a term paper by a college student. Try to find out as much as you can about the author and if possible use only material that has been written by an expert in philosophy for your paper. In the examples below you will see the author of this paper which has been published on a NASA site ( http://vesuvius.jsc.nasa.gov/er/seh/philosophy.html ). Consider carefully the qualifications of a government agency as author versus, for instance, a private individual. While you can be fairly certain what you read at the government site is reliable, it may be hard to tell what qualifications a private individual might possess..
How accurate is the information presented at the site? Can any of the facts in the article be verified against an outside source? Is the information free of grammatical, spelling and other errors? Errors may indicate that the author is less than conscientious in presenting information. Is there anyone responsible for the accuracy of the information? Books and periodicals published in a conventional fashion employ professional editors to ensure that the information in their publications is correct and reliable. Where the Internet is concerned, you become the editor and you make the decisions on whether the information you are reading is reliable. In the example below from a NASA site you will see that there are links to other government pages. In this instance, you can probably be fairly certain that the material is accurate (or as accurate as NASA can make it). This would be an acceptable site for a research paper.
Objectivity
When evaluating sites, try to identify the goals of the individual or group responsible for the site. Not every site on the Internet is an objective, unbiased source of information. Some sites are authored by individuals or organizations that have a clearly stated point of view. Some sites will attempt to present both sides of an issue, others will not. Evaluate whether the point of view presented is appropriate for your paper. Certain sites, such as those produced by a government agency or an educational institution tend to be more objective than sites from organizations or companies. Look for .gov or .edu in the URL to tell if you are at the site of a government agency or an educational institution. If the site has a .com, .org, or .net in the URL it may be a private site or one supported by an organization with a specific point of view. See the examples below for examples of a .gov URL and a .net URL.
http://aspe.os.dhhs.gov/poverty/01poverty.htm
http://www2.ari.net/home/poverty/welcome.html
Currency
Conventional publications such as books and periodicals generally bear a date of publication. This allows you to determine the age of the material and whether or not you would want to use it in your paper. Web based publications do not always have a date, and when they do, it does not always refer to the date the content of the site was written/published. A date on a web page may indicate the original publishing date of the article, the date the article was placed on the web, or the date the page was last updated. Pages that are updated frequently are often the most useful for a research paper. Undated pages may offer outdated information that would not be appropriate for your research paper.
In the example above, the article is almost twenty years old. However, currency may or may not be a significant factor when writing your philosophy paper. In this particular case, this is the date when the article was written. There is no indication on the page as to when the article was published on the Web.
Keep in mind that sometimes links on a web page leading to other sites may go nowhere. The site may have moved or no longer exist. These are often called stale or dead links, and can indicate that the site you are visiting has not been cared for recently or may have been abandoned. Conscientious webmasters try to minimize dead links, and a site with a lot of dead links may not be very current..
Coverage
Although the Internet has a tremendous amount of information about an enormous number of topics, much of this information is represented by very brief articles. Such articles do not generally explore a topic in-depth, and often don't have enough information to be useful sources for a research paper. Try to choose articles that are long enough to demonstrate that the author has a thorough understanding of the topic. Look for articles that include a bibliography/list of references showing the materials the author used when creating the article. This bibliography/list of references can be a valuable source of other articles on your topic.
Below is a section of the bibliography from the example above. This plus the length of the paper would make it a good choice for your research.
Remember...
You are the editor! You decide whether an article on the Internet is appropriate for your paper. Still not sure about whether you should use a particular site? Ask your instructor. Your instructor is very familiar with the field of philosophy and can make any final recommendations on the usefulness of the material presented on a web site.
Click here for a quick reference guide Evaluating Internet Sites (PDF format).