Judging Quality and Reliability of Information on the Net

All featured news articles at BrownCafe are linked directly to publicly available news sources that are considered reliable. There is also information available in the BrownCafe Boards section that should be considered with more skepticism.

Some things you may want to consider when evaluating the quality of online information are:

Source: Is the information linked directly from a location with a high level of reliability? Major newswires and reputable publications have high standards of editing and quality control. A recognizable brand name is a good indication of quality and reliability.

Currency: Information floats around the web in a random and unpredictable way. The further you get from the source the more likely that the document that you're looking at is not current information.

Integrity: It is very easy to alter electronic documents either intentionally or unintentionally. Text can get scrambled, sections lost or incorrect information can be pasted in. Widely circulated items can lose all traces of their original form.

Links to Web Sites dedicated to evaluating the quality of online information:

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly:
or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources

Thinking Critically About World Wide Web Information