Checking Out “Internet Facts”
I call them “Internet facts” because they're things that float around the Internet. They're not necessarily true. They're distributed via both the Web and e-mail. There are a couple of resources that are invaluable for checking out these sites, but in addition to these resources there are three e-mail characteristics that should raise a red flag for you:
You're asked to forward the e-mail to everyone you know.
The e-mail describes a problem—like a particularly horrible virus—that if it were legitimate would be on every cable channel as an emergency news flash, including the Golf Channel.
The e-mail promises you some kind of reward for forwarding/replicating the mail.
Snopes—http://www.snopes.com
Snopes is the first site I go to when I want to check out something that someone has sent me. It's never let me down. You can do a simple keyword search or you can browse through a variety of topics, including Disney, movies, love, and even an entire category devoted to Coca-Cola. Generally you can take a short snippet from an e-mail you've gotten, plug it into the keyword search, and get relevant results.
Vmyths—http://www.vmyths.com
You may be getting a lot of well-meaning pointers to virus warnings and other such information. In that case I recommend you run them through Vmyths.com. This site has been tracking virus myths for years, and busts them up with both plenty of information and a sense of humor (which comes in handy if you've just gotten your 10,000th warning for the “jdbgmgr.exe” virus).
Snopes and Vmyths are both useful if there's a specific thing you're trying to get more information on or refute. But there's a whole other class of credibility Web sites: those that provide guidance on evaluating resources.
Evaluating Information Found on the Internet—http://www.library.jhu.edu/elp/useit/evaluate/
This is a much more thorough look at information credibility online, outlining several questions you can ask as well as pointers to some external information and coverage of specific types of misleading sites, like hate sites.
Information Evaluation Form—http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/EvalForm.pdf
This handy printable PDF file gives you a checklist to use when you're thoroughly evaluating a Web source.
As you might imagine, site evaluation is a big topic for the constant researcher. You'll find several more resources for evaluating Web site credibility at http://www.dmoz.org/Reference/Education/Instructional_Technology/Evaluation/Web_Site_Evaluation/.
With all these resources, am I telling you that you'll have to spend 20 minutes ticking off a checklist every time you want to visit a Web site? Of course not. But if you're going to cite a page, or use facts on a page to develop a strategy, or use them for anything but leisure and entertainment (and sometimes even then!), you've got to have a sense of how credible they are.