🚀 go-pugleaf

"Theresa S. Arndt" <tarndt@NETSERV.UNMC.EDU> writes:

> I teach source as one of the major criteria for evaluating information
> (web-based or otherwise).  Domain name is one clue to source.  Thus I
> believe it is quite relevant.  Notice I said ONE clue to source.  Source
> can be especially confusing on the web.

Perhaps the single most important lesson that we can teach to novices is
that the web has profoundly democratized the distribution of information.
A small company can produce an attractive web site that (except sometimes
for the name recognition/trademark value in the URL) competes very well
with that of a large company; the multiple orders of magnitude in cost
difference between an ad in the local paper and in a national magazine
don't apply in THIS medium. An individual who 30 years ago might post a few
mimeographed handbills can now get her message out to a worldwide audience.
A "C" student can post a term paper from a freshman biology course that is
almost indistinguishable in form and URL from the tech report posted by his
professor.  Source IS confusing on the web, but we are probably better off
if we treat this (in lesson 1, at least) as a strength of the medium.

As others have noted, I don't find domain name to be at all reliable as a
quality indicator, though it's sometimes useful as a partial indicator of
type of source and often useful as a way to narrow searches.  But if you
teach that to novices, be sure to also give them some examples of quality
differences within a particular type of domain.  And be sure to point out
that quality of presentation (e.g. graphical appearance of the web page) is
also a poor indicator of source in most domains [aside: graphical
appearance is of course a good indicator if you're looking for pages about
graphical technique in web page construction :-)]

I do think that we should teach URL decomposition and tools for author
identification.  For example, understanding that it costs a few hundred
dollars to get your own domain helps us understand the difference between
<http://www.foo.net/bar> and <http://www.bar.org>.  Teach the understanding
that given <http://fu.baz.edu/long/name> you can try
<http://fu.baz.edu/long/>, <http://foo.baz.edu>, or <http://www.baz.edu> to
learn about the organizational context.  Teach the use of whois to find out
a bit about that obscure domain name.  Teach use of search engines not just
to find a page but to find out more about the putative author of a page
you're interested in.  Etc.

JQ Johnson                      office: 115F Knight Library
Academic Education Coordinator  mailto:jqj@darkwing.uoregon.edu
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