Week Four Question

Week 4
How do you judge the value of expertise on the Web? Does it differ from your notion of expertise in face-to-face settings? Why or why not?

I hadn’t thought about it prior to this course or being posed the question directly, but I think I judge expertise on the web the same as I do in f2f settings. How much care I take to judge a situation depends on the topic. For instance, if someone is telling me it’s going to rain this afternoon, I would just take their word for it, except perhaps if I were planning to attend an outdoor BBQ or something. In that case, I would question the source of the information.

I think my importance thermometer is gauged by the effect to me (or others) personally and/or to my value system. For example, I’ve become more interested in the health care reform debate in recent weeks. I find it difficult to understand what the real differences and options are between the choices. One thing that is said a lot is “such and such an organization endorses/doesn’t endorse this bill.” At first, I took that as a strong case for one side or the other, but since I’ve heard it so much I now want to know more about the credentials and other info about these organizations. This would be the same as whether I heard it f2f or read it on the web.

Regarding the Wiki, now that I understand more about how information is generated, I take it less as “fact” than I did before. However, the same readings on the Wiki made me think about how I judged expertise prior to the Web, in that ancient all-f2f world. I took everything in the encyclopedia as fact. Now I see that one could question information there as well. So, once again, I’m back to judging expertise the same on the Web as in f2f.