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Sometimes, it takes special skills just to find something on the Web. To use the web well, however, you need to do even more. I offer for your consideration the following six suggestions when examining Web pages:
1. Make sure you are in the right place
- Does the site address the topic you are researching?
- Was the page worth visiting?
2. When in doubt, doubt
- Do you have a good reason to believe that the information on the site is accurate?
- Do authors provide any supportive evidence for their conclusions?
3. Consider the source
- Who are the authors of the webpage?
- What gives them the authority or expertise to write?
- Who is responsible for the site?
- Is this a commercial, governmental, personal or academic website?
4. Know what's happening.
- What is the purpose of the website?
- Is the main purpose to inform, to persuade or sell you something?
- Do you understand what is being said?
- What do you think has not been said that should be addressed?
5. Look at the details
- Is the website well organized?
- Are the misspelled words or examples of poor grammar?
- Do the links work?
- Do they send you beyond the site to other reliable sources of information?
- Does the website offer anything unique or does it tell you little more than in an encyclopaedia?
- Are the graphics on the webpage clear and helpful or distracting and confusing?
- What opinions do other have about the webpage?
6. Distinguish webpages from pages found on the web
- Do you think this webpage was designed for the web, or do you think it was originally something else?
- If it was originally something else, what something else was it?
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