Instead, ask two targeted questions: 1) How much trust — or how little — should be placed in specific Internet sources? And 2) what are meaningful criteria for answering that kind of question? (See also "Believable or not? 13 questions to ask," below.)

Where an article or report is sometimes less important than knowing 1) who wrote it, 2) what is the author's intent, and 3) who sponsors the website where the article is published.

Skills and aptitudes that you already employ in reacting thoughtfully to live presentations, videotapes, books and newspaper articles, as well as to statements made by teachers and classmates, are also helpful in evaluating networked resources on the Internet and the Web.

However, your evaluation of websites should also address issues associated with the ease and anonymity with which Internet sources are modified.

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You can learn to evaluate the credibility of Internet sources systematically.

You can do this evaluation in a step-by-step fashion by answering the questions listed below. A few of the questions may not be relevant to the websites you are considering as sources for the paper that you are writing, but you can make that decision. Many of these questions should seem familiar. They elaborate on what you already have learned about how to question and evaluate the authoritativeness of any verbal, visual, audiovisual or electronic source:

1. How qualified is the person or organization responsible for the website or e-mail communication? If your source is a personal web page and not an institutional one, that fact does not necessarily discredit it. That's the lazy way out. Instead, look more closely at the evidence and the connections. After all, institutions — corporations and governments — also act incompetently, dissemblingly and mendaciously.

2. Is there a way to contact the personal or corporate author of a website or an e-mail? Or is the author's identity concealed?

3. Are primary and secondary sources for claimed facts cited clearly enough that you can track those sources down, i.e., fnd them and examine them?

4. Does the author of the website honestly acknowledge and engage alternative versions of controverted facts and competing interpretations?

For example, if an author claims that the talented Chinese Muslim navigator Admiral Zheng He (Cheng Ho [1371-1435]) sailed to New Zealand and South America in the fifteenth century, does s/he also address evidence assembled by reputable cartographers, linguists and historians for the purpose of refuting that assertion?

5. Is this website logically organized? Does the arrangement of general and specific (dependent, illustrative) parts of web content clearly reflect their interrelationship with one another? If appropriate, is a user's "Help" function provided?

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6. Not all content needs to be regularly changed. But if this website should be updated on a regular basis, is its content current?

7. Conversely, does the ease with which Web content is modified lead you to be skeptical about its reliability as a documentary record? If so, how will you resolve your doubts? After all, a line of hypertext mark-up language, i.e., HTML, can be rewritten in less than a minute!

Compare versions of the same website as early as 1996 in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.

For example, investigative journalist Ian Lind discovered that an editor of the web edition of The Honolulu Advertiser had altered a quote from a public speech by President Evan Dobelle of the University of Hawai‘i in an attempt to shield the top administrator from scrutiny. Too late for the failed cover-up, the print edition with the embarrassing quotation had already been published! Click here and scroll down to "July 24, 2002 - Wednesday." The editor's ineffective subterfuge and the newspaper's failed cover-up were also summarized by Mr. Lind in the Honolulu Weekly, 31 July - 6 August 2002.

Compare current and earlier versions of the same website in the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. Also, consult Daniel J. Cohen and Roy Rosenzweig, Digital History: A Guide To Gathering, Preserving, And Presenting the Past On The Web (George Mason University, Center for History and New Media, 2007).

8. How convincing are inferences made by the website's author from information on the website or the person sending the e-mail?

For example, why are "conspiracy" theorists often so unconvincing? First of all, many of them refuse to take responsibility for what they write on the Internet. Ask: Why are they typically unwilling to definewhat they really mean by "conspiracy"? Why do are they, instead, content to repeat the word conspiracy as if repetitiously insinuating "conspiracy" added explanatory force to their hinting, implying and suggesting? What is their standard for convincing evidence? What is their standard for asserting a cause-and-effect relationship? Are conspiracy theorists unable or unwilling to distinguish an outcome that is planned by someone from one that happens to benefit the same person? And since conspiracy theories are part of the American political landscape, why are they unwilling to consider the possibility that their claims are nothing more than another form political escapism diverting our attention and energies from solving serious local and international problems?

9. If you are reading an English-language page of a multilingual website (especially one whose primary language is not English), are you reading a full translation? Or just a summary?

10. Does the author of your selected website describe linked websites described fairly and accurately?

11. Do unexpected gaps in information on your selected website require looking elsewhere for printed, oral or audiovisual sources?

12. Is this website accessible to all people who might be able to challenge its claims, including people with disabilities?

13. All things considered, how much overall confidence should one place in the website or e-mail communication that you are thinking of quoting?

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• Business, Humanities, and Social Sciences Department, Hamilton Library, "Evaluating World Wide Web Resources," In "Evaluating Information," Basic Library Research Handbook, 3rd ed. (First published, 2000; Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Libraries, June 2007), Chapter 7, pp. 7-5 - 7-6; downloadable.

• Josie Tong, Critical Evaluation of Resources on the Internet (Herbert T. Coutts Education and Physical Education Library, University of Alberta, updated 4 January 2004).

• Joe Barker, Evaluating Web Pages: Techniques to Apply & Questions to Ask," University of California - Berkeley Library, last updated 13 July 2008.

• Elizabeth E. Kirk, "Evaluating Information Found on the Internet," The Sheridan Libraries, The Johns Hopkins University, 1996 [updated 2008?].

• Victoria F. Caplan, "Evaluating and Citing Web Resources for Research," library workshop, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 1999-present.

• Differentiate among five increasingly credible levels of authoritativeness. Consult the "Authority Levels" guide produced by the Berglund Center for Internet Studies and the Matsushita Center for Electronic Learning at Pacific University.

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This web page substantially revises Vincent K. Pollard's earlier article "The World Wide Web Demands World-Class Thinking Skills," Teaching for Success [Pentronics Publishing], vol. 13, no. 6 (September 2001), p. 3.

A later version appeared as "Student Guide: Evaluating Internet Resources," The Kapi‘o Newspress [Kapi‘olani Community College], vol. 38, issue 1 (19 August 2004), p. 2.

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Last modified, 4 October 2008.

© 1999-2008, Vincent K. Pollard.
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