August 23, 2001

• My plans to attend the Slams tonight (Wednesday) have once more been postponed.
  
  Have you ever stayed up all night to complete a project, only to spend 9/10ths of the time on the kind of distractions that delayed you completing the project until the last minute in the first place? I was up til 5am working on a WHEEL brochure due Friday, got up at 9:30am to work on it some more so I could take it to a review meeting at noon -- so, I drag around all day tired and achy and a lot less productive than if I'd just slept.
  
  Have you ever run around in your shirt-sleeves because there's just a little drizzle outside but the air's warm and you grew up in the Northwest and you like the rain and you don't want to bother carrying a coat? And have you been caught when the rain-pipes came unclogged and the drizzle turned into a downpour, and you walked into your 4pm meeting with your hair in your eyes and dripping all over the floor? So then I was wet and cold and tired and stiff and aching.
  
  I came home, took a nap, got on the computer to just check a few things before I finish the WHEEL brochure, and it's 1:30am already.
  
  I am not totally irresponsible, folks. I'll have that brochure turned in tomorrow afternoon, and it'll look great. But I'll probably be exhausted afterward. Not from the work, but from the distractions!
  
  This is how ADD works with me: I am either eminently distractable, chasing off after anything interesting -- and it is easy to interest me! -- or I hyper-focus, locking into one thing for eight, ten, or up to 36-hours-in-one-chair straight.
  
  One of the things I got distracted with was the whole subject of evaluating information on the Internet. Someone on another forum made the statement that I was just as anonymous as someone that I was criticizing for using anonymity to hide behind while indulging in spite.
  
  Well God Bless Us Everyone, but what do I have to do to break anonymity?!! I use my christened name on the Internet, I post my picure, I post a link to my website that has my whole biography and accounts of being homeless and bipolar and links to news stories about projects I'm involved in and friends who've met me and other websites that refer to me...
  
  I don't expect anybody to read all that. But I check out the home websites of anyone I'm interested in, and I certainly check the credentials of anyone who tries to tell me something. And I am always trying to tell people something. Doesn't anybody check my credentials?
  
  Maybe you don't believe anything you read on the Web. But in my opinion, to say "I don't believe anything" is the same as saying "I'll believe anything" -- because it means you have no standards that you use to measure what to believe.
  
  This is a compilation of what I've posted over the years about evaluating information (and information sources) on the Web:
  
  

  If you are looking for information about cloning, how do you distinguish between scientific reports, debates on ethics, and the news that little furry meatballs from Mars have assassinated George W. Bush and replaced him with a genetically engineered meatball clone?
  
  Being able to evaluate the information you read on the Web for credibility and usefulness not only serves you when you are looking for information. It helps when you are offering information to know how others are going to evaluate your credibility.
  
  One source for probably more discussion than you can ever use on this is
  http://www.vuw.ac.nz/~agsmith/evaln/evaln.htm - "Evaluation of Information Sources" - a link list compiled for librarians. It's part of the Information Quality WWW Virtual Library at
  http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-InfoQuality.html
  
  A simple and accessible guide is the book Web Wisdom: How to Evaluate and Create Information Quality on the Web by Jan Alexander and Marsha Ann Tate. The authors also have the entire contents of the book available on the Web at
  http://www2.widener.edu/Wolfgram-Memorial-Library/webevaluation/webeval.htm
  
  Points that the author's stress for all web pages are:

  • Who wrote this and what are their credentials?
    When you are putting up your own website, remember to have an "About Me" page. You may not feel comfortable giving your real name and address to strangers, but you should give enough background to back up any claims to expertise that you make on your pages.
  • What is the author's bias?
    No human being can be completely unbiased. But if an author is up front about what their affiliations are and what their mission is, you can adjust for bias in evaluating their arguments. On your own website, do you have a list of affiliations? Do you have a personal mission statement?
  • Who is the sponsor of this site?
    If you are selling anything -- even as an Amazon associate or other affiliate program -- remember that your readers will take this into account in evaluating your credibility. One more reason for being cautious about affiliate programs!

  
  
  My own favorite guidelines for evaluating information:

  1. Look for the traditional reporter's "who, what, when, where." Real news will have verifiable details.
  2. Track back to original sources. If someone tells you, "Almost all convicts are left handed" without listing the study this statistic came from, be suspicious.
  3. Simple scientific method:
     • Does the idea offered explain the facts?
     • Is this idea necessary to explain the facts, or does an existing, simpler idea explain them just as well?
     • Is this idea contradicted by any known facts?
     • Is this idea useful in predicting future events, or the results of a particular action?
     • Test it yourself.
  4. Cross-check. If someone comes into the Real Change reporting two dead bodies in Seward Park, we get on the phone to the police, the Fire Department, and the Medical Examiner's office. If I read in one popular-science book that Thomas Edison knowledgeably discussed nuclear physics and rocket engines with his cronies, I'm going to look it up in several other science histories. If it's true, it's been referred to more than once.
  5. A source that has proved credible a number of times in the past will be easier to believe in the future. If a source proves false several times in a row I may start ignoring anything they say. BTW: I tend to credit more the people who use phrases like "In my observation" and "I believe" and "According to my experience" -- instead of "As all intelligent people know" and "The Truth Is" and "Dr. Laura said it; I believe it; that settles it."

  
  
  You have to balance all these tests against each other. It is possible for one person to be right and all others be wrong. If you hear from three different sources that a shark jumped out of Elliott Bay and dragged a tourist off Pier 48, that doesn't constitute proof. It is possible, even likely, for someone to be right on many things and wrong on one, or wrong on many things and right on one. It is possible for a new discovery to overturn a great deal previously "known" to be scientifically tue. But playing these several tests against each other has stood me in good stead so far.
  
  There is one final thing to watch out for, though. We're all most likely to believe what fits our current beliefs, and most likely to perceive evidence that supports it. I try to play Devil's Advocate in my head. While reading somethiong I agree with, I ask "What if this weren't so? What would prove that this isn't so?" and when reading something I disagree with, ask "What if this were so? How would I prove that it was true?"
  

  
  
  Now, was that the most boring Xanga log you ever read?
  

  • 4:59 am
  • 8 Comments