The original version of this document was written by Alan November for the September 1998 edition of High School Principal Magazine. The original online version of this article can be found on the Educational Renaissance Planners web site. Adapted with permission.

__________________ 

The fact is, that kids will increasingly depend on the Internet for information, so it's important that they cultivate ways to evaluate their findings. Zack could have used some, or all, of the following techniques to decide whether Professor Butz's site was a legitimate source for information.

Purpose

Try to ascertain a Web site's purpose. What is it trying to do? Why was it created? Most Web sites are designed to sell services and products, present information, put ideas forward, or entertain. Many sites do several of these at once.

A Web site's purpose will not always be clear. Look at Butz's site. His purpose is surely advocacy, although he comes across as an objective information provider, especially in the closing sentence of his article: "Surely any thoughtful person must be skeptical." Would that ring any warning bells for a 14-year-old? Would a ninth grader know how to distinguish between objective information and propoganda?

Author

The next step in validation involves the site's author. We all know that it's easy to fool people. Many people, especially kids, will believe someone if he or she sounds authoritative. Butz is a professor, sure, but he's an Engineering professor. How does that qualify him to speak as an expert on the Holocaust? It doesn't. But people see "Professor" and take what he says seriously.

Zack didn't know anything about Butz, but could have researched his background. If Zack ran a search for "Arthur Butz," on the search engine Google, he would find Butz's name on a page titled "Holocaust Deniers" at the Web site for the anti-hate organization HateWatch (http://www.splcenter.org/intel/hatewatch/). Similarly, Zack would find Butz's article at a second hate directory site listed under "A Guide to Hate Groups on the Internet: Hate Books, Newsletters and Articles". Zack would find Butz mentioned negatively in a March 1998 USA Today article titled, "College anti-Semitism on the rise, according to new report." Zack would also find Butz's book described as popular among "anti-Semites" in a review of Deborah Lipstadt's book Denying the Holocaust.

If Zack had run this multi-search on Butz, he would have seen how other people categorize Butz' work.

Meta-Web Information

"Meta-Web Information" allows Zack to look at Web sites as part of the Internet; in other words, Meta-Web information validates Web pages solely within the context of other Web pages.

Let's start with the URL, or address, of a Web page. Kids need to know when they're accessing a personal home page. Most Internet Service Providers give their subscribers a few megabytes of free space on a Web server to use as they please.

Here are two sample URLs: <http://www.cdsinet.net/users/bartlett> and <http://www.icon-stl.net/~stefan/>. An experienced Web user knows that both URLs point to personal home pages.

In the first example, the word "users" is the tip-off. "bartlett" is the user name of someone who accesses the Internet through cdsinet.net. In the second example, focus on the ~. A tilde (~) indicates a Web site that has been created by someone given space on a Web server."stefan" is the user name of someone who accesses the Internet through icon-stl.net.

Knowing the above, if Zack had looked at Butz's URL - <http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/index.html> - he'd have seen the ~, a dead giveaway that this is a personal Web site. Instead of assuming that Butz's Web site was sponsored by Northwestern University, Zack would have known that it was equivalent to a bulletin board posted outside an office.

Just as Zack can know something about individuals by their clothing, he can learn about a Web site by looking at its URL. Clothing tells us a lot, but the company a person keeps tells us more. Learning how a Web page interacts within the network of all other Web sites is valuable information.

Zack has a powerful tool that can place a Web site in context - the link command.

To apply the link command to Butz, Zack should go to AltaVista at http://www.altavista.com/, type <link:pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/index.html> (without brackets and without a space after the colon), and then click the Search button.

The search will bring Zack nothing. But if he truncates the URL and enters: <link:pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/> it does work. AltaVista listed 879 Web sites that linked to Butz's Web page.

The 879 Web sites referencing Butz basically fall into two categories: hate monitors and hatemongers. For hate monitors, Butz is a shining example of a Holocaust denier. Among the hatemongers, Butz is a star. Once you see who thinks Butz is a great source of information, the game is up. Could there be any doubt when one finds links to Butz on the same page as links to Online Fascist Resource Page, Knights of Michigan KKK, White Power Central, and Texas Aryan Nationalist Skinheads?

A Happy Ending

In the end Zack's high school arranged for an interview with a Jewish woman who lived in Europe during World War II. It is always a good idea to look beyond the Internet for sources of authentic information.

Related Lesson

Thinking About Hate