Internet citizenship

  1. Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age.
  2. Energy is the only life, and is from the Body; and Reason is the bound or outward circumference of Energy.
  3. Energy is Eternal Delight.
William Blake, c. 1793, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, The Voice of the Devil

Evaluating and citing information

Now that you have found all this new stuff, how do you tell the good information from the bad? Because anybody can put information on the Internet, there is no guarantee that the information is factual.

It does pretty much guarantee that everybody has the right of reply, though. See David Irving's Reply to Jeffrey Shallit's "Lies of Our Times" for an example of the problems of evaluating information.

Two very good, brief guides to evaluating information are:

Citations

Because it is relatively new, referencing information found on the Internet can be difficult, too. Luckily, several academic journal editors and librarians have provided solutions to this problem. You will find a whole list of Electronic References & Scholarly Citations of Internet Sources in this section of the WWW Virtual Library.

Last time I checked, a fairly common requirement for citations was the 'author, date' system, as used by the Australian Government Publishing Service. Academic Referencing of Internet-based Resources is an article which addresses that particular citation system.