The Web Explorer

I think judging the value of the expertise on the web is little bit more difficult than in f2f. In f2f environment, I usually relatively knew the source’s background or if we just meet, we do some short introduction first. In the web, the principle in how to judge may be the same (by knowing source’s background) but the techniques that were used may be different than in f2f because of web’s characteristic and limitation. The following are techniques that I usually used to review and ensure source’s validity and quality in the web:

• Who is the author? Knowing the background of the author is important to determine the quality of the articles. The author usually has attached their background information on their blog or wiki.
• How many articles have ever being made by the author? By knowing the number of articles that have been made, we can estimate the author’s expertise in the particular field.
• Knowing the articles’ rating. The higher ratings of the articles then the articles are also more reliable, because more people have read and reviewed it.
• Reading and reviewing reader comment in author’s blog or wiki.  Just like my previous entry in my blog. Readers make comments in blog or wiki to give opinions, critiques about the articles. Reviewing those comments are helpful to determine the article’s validity.