Running Head: WEB SITE CREDIBILITY AND HOW TO JUDGE IT.

Web Site Credibility and How to Judge it

Web site credibility is a very serious matter especially in cases of websites like those on
Law, Healthcare and Criminal Justice System. People who are interested in various topics
publish blogs on these subjects, but they do not bother to check up whether the information
posted by them is actually correct. Most of the readers of websites, on reading such inaccurate
information will consider then as facts. In case they volunteer out this information while talking
with their peers, they will be embarrassed but more importantly, if any student mentions the
same in his answers, he will score no marks. This injustice will be compounded by the fact that
the student will have no idea which answer is wrong. These disadvantages are however merely
trifles, if one compares the same to a medical website where we assume hypothetically, the
writer confuses one illness with another diagnosis and therefore writes wrong diagnosis for two
illnesses. Some patient going through the same may be convinced that the information is
authentic and purchase OTC medicines for the wrong disease. This can lead to severe
complications of health and even, death.
To overcome this problem, the best way out would perhaps be ae another software
program and a tester only has to cut and paste the words which need to be checked and after a
few minutes, the results come out. Though attractive, this is however, not possible, because
hundreds of thousands of webpages are published in a single day which means millions of
statements. These statements are mostly non-fiction and will range from the creation of the earth
or even beyond to the present date. Hence, for comparing, all facts which took place at all places
in the world during this rather large period of time will be required to be input, which is not a

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Running Head: WEB SITE CREDIBILITY AND HOW TO JUDGE IT.

possible task. Therefore, correct facts can be found in academic papers (which are the sites
brought by an academic paper only SE like jurn.org). Or these can be found in the databases like
Jstor.org, Ebsco.com, scholar.google.com, freefullpdf.com, etc. Most of these however charge for
accessing and only an abstract of the peer reviewed academic paper is made free of cost. But
some free sites are here too like google scholar and freefullpdf.
But returning back to our problem, how do we evaluate the credibility of a website? Most
academic institutions and organizations follow one particular way of assessing the website
credibility. This is that devised by the New Mexico University Center for Website Evaluation.
The University judges the credibility of different websites through different parameters such as
1. Writer Details
2. Language/Content quality
3. References
4. Writers qualification to write that particular article.
5. Date of writing, etc.
6. Links provided?
7. Bias of Content? Own views? Neutral views
8. Reason for publication.
9. Publisher/Affiliation
10. Audience for whom written.

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Running Head: WEB SITE CREDIBILITY AND HOW TO JUDGE IT.

As regards Wikipedia, it cannot be considered as an academic source. This is because the

content is written by its users. Hence the expertise of the person writing a piece of content cannot
be gauged. That is why, in many Wikipedia entries one finds the remark Citation required. By
this line, the Wikipedia author means that back up facts about the content is required.
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