Evaluating Websites

The Internet is an amazing resource full of all sorts of useful information but unfortunately not all information displayed on the Internet is accurate. Because it is so easy for anyone to post information, you have to be careful when evaluating websites. They might not be a credible source. I had no idea about the elephant saga with Stephan Colbert until Mr. Nolan talked about it in class. Colbert told his viewers to edit Wikipedia to say that elephants are running rampant in Africa and that they are not endangered at all. Before the end of Colbert's show, the page had been changed and rechanged and so on until Wikipedia had to lock the page because so many people were changing it to display the wrong information. This is an example of how easy it is to post incorrect information on sites such as Wikipedia that some people see as credible. The only reason the errors on this page were caught quickly was because of the mass amount of attention it was gaining.
Something that surprised me was the way in which google ordered its results in searches. I had never really thought about how they decide which sites are the most rel event. It is interesting that there is a method behind it. They choose the sites that contain your search phrase or word that are most often linked to by other sites. The fact that they are commonly linked to is supposed to demonstrate their credibility. This strategy, however, is not foolproof because when you search for Martin Luther King Jr., the site martinlutherking.org appears which is funded by a white power group. Basically, when using sites such as Google, you have to be careful about how you evaluate your sources to make sure they are credible.