Credibility--Wired.com

www.wired.com

I chose this site to really take a look at it before Adobe steps in this summer. The page is complete. The title is Wired News. The site was created 8/28/2008 and last updated 2/26/2010. The audience consists of those interested and familiar with technology and tends to focus on issues close to technology and issues close to the people who are close to technology. This site contains many working internal and reliable external links. Outside sources support the information. Since this is a news-reporting site, each article is supported by different, but valid sources.
Wired Magazine created the site and controls its content. The entire editorial team of the site may be contacted by E-mail and in addition to that— a few members of the team may be Instant Messaged or followed on twitter. There are a few advertisements from various companies, but the sponsor of the website is clearly Wired Magazine. The domain name www.wired.com tells me that the site is likely to be affiliated with Wired Magazine and is professional enough to have its own domain name. The site is supported by a printed medium giving it more credibility.
The site is mostly professional looking, and lacks grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors. The site has a professional sound, but is not above using popular web and tech slang. This makes it an appropriate match for the audience who can trust and relate to the site. The format is acceptable. It is fairly easy to navigate, but looks sloppy: particularly towards the bottom. Headings are appropriate. Images support the content and seem edited to look clear, but may give slower computers with lower bandwidths problems. I Googled the word “wired” to find the site, but it is a popular and well-known site and magazine making it easy to locate. There are some Meta tags in the code, but no alt text that I can find. Content and editorial get a little jumbled, but Advertisements are clearly marked.
The only mark against credibility on this site is that a viewer cannot immediately distinguish content from editorial. It is still possible to tell and even though the format could be better, I would still trust this site and its content. I would like to point out that my professor is right—more should be expected from such a prominent tech focused publication.