The Internet gives users access to thousands of pages of information and data from all over the world. Because so much information is available, the Internet has become an uncontrolled environment where it is vital for users to be able to critically ev aluate the information they receive from the Internet in terms of accuracy, quality, and authority.
Authorship is one of the most important criterion used in evaluating information on a web site.
To be able to assess the information's quality, users need to know the basis of the authority with which the author speaks. Things to look for to establish authority are whether the author lists their own biographical information, whether the author provides contact information, the author's affiliation, whether the author is referenced by another authority, whether the author's we b page is linked from another document you trust, and lastly whether the information on the site is accurate and if you can prove its accuracy. Perhaps one of the most frustrating things Internet researchers run into are pages that are several months or even years out of date. Currency refers to the timeliness of information and for most web pages, it is a very important element to de termine the information's accuracy and quality. To determine currency of the information in the page, look for dates when the information was gathered or if refers to clearly dated information.