How I Almost Started F'ning Hating IFLScience: A Cautionary Tale

One thing that I am always explaining to students, and also random people in the street, is how important it is to properly assess sources. This, I remind them, is doubly important when it comes to things on the Internet. Despite my advocacy and frequent protestations, it is still possible for people to not follow their own advice. This was almost one of those instances.

My news feed on Facebook, much like everybody's I'm sure, is an insane cavalcade of the interests, beliefs, opinions, and suggestions of the people who make up our geographically-spread personal network. Oh, and there are ads. For the last few months, I had seen several weird news stories pop up that people were sharing from IFLScience but the stories were, well, not really on par with what I had come to expect from the site.

The one that kept popping up most frequently was a story about Japanese robotic bears who assisted people to commit suicide. I didn't read the article but I did a quick Google check on the topic. By just reading the titles and brief synapses that came back I saw that this story was a hoax. I didn't follow any of the links (probably because I was desperately trying to complete my practicum and graduate) and just decided that IFLScience decided to break into the obviously lucrative satirical news market.

Soon after graduating I noticed a new story about a previously missing college professor who was found secretly living in a family's home with 50 drums of LSD. Under less stress and having more time, I followed this link and read the story. That's when my Source Sense started tingling. Something about the story seemed "off". I started googling the places, names, and important terms from the story and was getting nothing other than links to the same "news item" on other sites. That is when I was about to fire off an exasperated comment to the person who posted the story in my feed where I was going to rail about it being a fake (or lame attempt at satirical) story, where I was going to deride how (I thought) IFLScience had been going downhill over the intervening months, and where I would exclaim that, "I f'ning hate IFLScience."

It was at that moment that my years of training kicked in (much later than it would have if I was behind the reference desk and helping somebody) and started assessing the site rather than just looking at it.

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The very first thing that I should have noticed after going to the site was the different URL. The real IFLScience site is a .com while this new, attempting to be funny one is a .org. Other than the different top-level domains the URLs are the same:

www.iflscience.com                                     www.iflscience.org

The next thing that was difficult to notice at first was the logos for the two sites. It is possible to mistake the two if you glance at them quickly, especially when the images are often quite small, but more than a second of scrutiny will show how different the two are:

                            

In other words, I had totally forgotten to use my work skills, the ones I try to teach others and help them use in their research and daily lives, myself. I became, for a brief instant, that person who hypocritically chastises, "Do what I say, not what I do!"

So it seems that IFLScience Organization (.org) is just a pretty unfunny satirical site that uses the presentation of information on social media sites to click-bait people onto their page. Which is odd because the site is not swarming with advertisements like most click-bait sites. Maybe they just think they are funny. Maybe they are, who am I to say?

One important takeaway for both information professionals and anyone online is that this highlights a problem with the way that people place trust in top-level domains (TLD). Most professionals often erroneously teach that, because they are unrestricted, .com TLDs should be scrutinized more than .org TLDs. The truth, however, is that .org is also an unrestricted top-level domain whose suggested use is for non-profits. The following is from the FAQ page of Public Interest Registry (PIR), the non-profit that has managed .org domains since 2003:

Can I register a .org domain if I am not a 501(c)?

"Yes, .org is an open and unrestricted domain. Anyone is allowed to use .org domain names" (link).

This is why the assessment of sources is so important and why librarians are always pestering you about it.This is also why librarians should always be brushing up on the rules and policies that govern the Internet. I visited several pages operated by public and academic libraries that still suggest that .org domains are more trustworthy than .com: which may be true most of the time but not all the time.

Read on in the next section if you want to learn about a valuable tool you can use to assess web sites.

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When assessing a website most professionals recommend using something called the CRAAP Test. Yes, it's okay to laugh. Originally designed by librarians at the Meriam Library at California State University, Chico, this tool can be used to assess both print and digital sources. The test consists of five categories which are scored from 1 (the worst) to 10 (the best). You then total the scores to discover how CRAPPy the site is. Here is the test device as presented by the North Carolina A&T State University:

Currency: the timelessness of the information

• When was the information published or posted?
• Has the information been revised or updated?
• Is the information current or out of date for your topic?
• Are the links functional?

Relevance: the importance of the information for your needs

• Does the information relate to your topic or answer your question?
• Who is the intended audience?
• Is the information at an appropriate level (i.e. not too elementary or advanced for your needs)?
• Have you looked at a variety of sources before determining this is one you will use?
• Would you be comfortable using this source for a research paper?

Authority: the source of information

• Who is the author/publisher/source/sponsor?
• Are the author's credentials or organizational affiliations given?
• What are the author's credentials or organizational affiliations given?
• What are the author's qualifications to write on the topic?
• Is there contact information, such as a publisher or e-mail address?
• Does the URL reveal anything about the author or the source?

Accuracy: the reliability, truthfulness, and correctness of the content, and

• Where does the information come from?
• Is the information supported by evidence?
• Has the information been reviewed or referred?
• Can you verify any of the information in another source or from personal knowledge?
• Does the language or tone seem biased or free of emotion?
• Are there spelling, grammar, or other typographical errors?

Purpose: the reason the information exists

• What is the purpose of the information? to inform? teach? sell? entertain? persuade?
• Do the authors/sponsors make their intentions or purpose clear?
• Is the information facts? opinion? propaganda?
• Does the point of view appear objective and impartial?
• Are there political, ideological, cultural, religious, institutional, or other biases?

By totaling the amount you scored each category it is possible to quantifiably measure of a site's quality:

45 - 50 Excellent | 40 - 44 Good | 35 - 39 Average | 30 - 34 Borderline Acceptable | Below 30 - Unacceptable (link)

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The takeaway here for those who use or teach the Internet as an information source is to always remember to analyze what you are looking at, while you are looking at it. 

I hope this serves as a reminder and I, for one, am happy that I can go back to f'ning loving science!