Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Credibility Through the Web



          Website credibility can be difficult to some of the most tech savvy people but even more difficult for those who do not use the internet on a day-to-day basis. Millions of websites are available to view yet many contain inaccurate information, viruses that could completely shut down your computer or store your important confidential information in the server's database. Charles Anesi is a man who is interested in historic events such as war and the Titanic. He has a site that has Titanic Casualty Figures. The purpose of his website is to compare the casualty figures of men, women and children and classes from the Titanic ship sinking. I chose to evaluate this site because it does have interesting and mostly accurate information but still could be questionable.
           Content
           The page is complete and Mr. Anesi last modified the site on Thursday, March 23, 2006 at 3:49:48 PM . The title of the page is: Titanic Disaster: Official Casualty Figures and Commentary. Although I am not sure when it was created, we could guess in 1997 when he got his copyright. The audience that is seeming to be reached is anyone interested in The Titanic. There does not seem to be a bias although he emphasizes women, children and survival rate based on classes to get his point across. Not all of the links work properly or go to the area that they are probably intended to, but I would say this is because the site is extremely outdated by five years and sites have changed. 
          Authority 
          It is not clear what Charles Anesi's profession is or if he is just a history enthusiast. Although when I searched "casualties for The Titanic" his site came up first which means that there are many people linked to him and that his site is viewed often. He probably did research and compiled a site together. I could not find much information on him except for his email address from his home page and a basically untouched Twitter handle. Being that the site is a ".com" domain it is quite possibly this is his own personal site that does not need to be associated with anyone or group except for himself. The site is about 98% accurate based on the charts and context. He has a reference page at the bottom of the page. 
       Presentation 
       The site to me was more difficult to follow and pay attention to. Now in 2011 we are used to websites being more spread out with navigation bars shows separate categories. On this site one page had everything and more that I wanted to know about the casualities of The Titanic. I felt it was crammed and lost my attention quickly. The tables helped me understand because truth is that I did not want to read a ton about who died.  There are grammar, spelling and puncuation mistakes and the page is just not fun to look at. There is no navigation, no sound anything that would keep my attention.        
        Overall, this is a credible site based on where he got his information, but Chuck Anesi does not hold a public figure role who we would think would be credible based on the information from his site. The site is useful but the presentation is not enticing. This shows us that anyone can make a website but that more than one site should be analyzed if we are going to reference or let people know something that we have found.


 

No comments: