If it's on the world wide web, it must be true!

[newtron]

As far as I know, currently, there are no rules or regulations in place to regulate the quality of information  on the world wide web.  The world wide web has made it extremely easy for anybody to basically publish anything they want for millions of people see all over the world.  With the increasing amount of information on the world wide web, and because the world wide web is becoming such an important source of information, do you think quality assurance regulations should be in place?  Do you think these types of regulation will be in place in the future?

[Tweed]

There is no way to sift through every web page to check if it's accurate, or even ones about to be published, but I believe that going down that road would lead to censorship. Everyone has to use their own judgement as to whether or not the information is good.

[twiglet4frog]

i dont think anything legal should be stopped, morally or not i think it should be shown, however i do believe that illegal must have regulations. having said that, there does seem to be underhanded monitering of the web, for example, copyright infingements are constantly causing sights to face cease or desist warnings, a couple of examples are

1) George Bush and Tony Blair singing "Gay Bar" was a very popular and funny video that is now virtually vanished from all websites private or non private, i have so far only found one site with an active download and that claims it wil be closed down soon due to outside pressures,

2) a website that is dedicated to naked girls with piercings received a threat of action because a member of the public registered to the site and placed on her profile that she enjoyed playing on her nintendo gamecube as an interest, Nintendo, alerted to the word NINTENDO being placed on a mild soft porn site threatened the site with legal action over copyright infingement and using there name in a pornographic way.

Nintendo were later forced to retract that when it was pointed out that it was merely a member of the public stating what interests they had and was not in any way accountable to what the public writes. this lead to nintendo offering a substantial donation to the siteholders favourite registered charity and a free game console and selection of games to the member of the public caught up in this affair as way of apologising for heavy handed use if regulating its own copyright.

So it seems that someone somewhere is making sure that some things are not published and allowing other things to be published, we are all controlled by someone to how much information we view and receive, only sometimes it can take a while for them to stop us and the internet is so huge that some can slip the net (excuse the pun)

[woofgang]

I do think that there need to be controls on the "How to make a bmb in your back yard" type websites, but I think that before you quality assure the net, there are tiny issues like the press to deal with. When it becomes the case that  I can believe ANYTHING printed by ANY paper, then it will be time to tacke e-communication

[slimfandango]

Newtron, please explain your assumption

[newtron]

I agree.  I think that one should always check the accuracy of the information, whether it was retrieved from the world wide web, a book, word of mouth, etc.  However the interesting thing about the world wide web is that there is no underlying code of ethics that publishers of websites have to go by.  For most other media types, such as news papers, magazines, scientific journals, etc. there is at least some type of internal quality control involved, usually in the form of a code of ethics of some type.  In the sientific community, technical papers are peer reviewed before being published.  This definitely does not mean that everything you read in the newspapers or journals is true.  I'm sure these codes of ethics are  broken by many, but at least there is an attempt to assure the quality of information being published.  This suggests that using the world wide web as a reference requires much more responsibility by the user than using the other media types mentioned above.  Unfortunately, this also suggests that as the amount of information on the world wide web increases, the value of the web as a reliable resource will decrease.  I can already see this as being the case.  When I am searching for specific information on the web, I end up spending a significant amount of time wading through a bunch of junk before I finally find what I am looking for.  Obviously, the proper use of search engines and the improvement in search engine technology should decrease the amount of time spent searching for specific information, but I'm not sure how big a difference it will make.

I also think that the web will be more regulated in the future just because people like to make rules and regulations.  Unfortuneately, the regulations will probably be based on morality rather than quality assurance.        

[twiglet4frog]

a bit of the beaten path with this but with a link to the press, i find it strange that i never knew a japanese hostage was beheaded only a couple of weeks AFTER Ken Bigley was beheaded. Ifollow the news everyday getting the latest stories from websites such as ananova.com and sky news website and never saw any mention of a japanese tourist both captured and executed and yet our press seems intent on showing us stories of how westerners are suffering, now i dont have any problem about hearing our own plights and feel sorry for all the families and victims but maybe sometimes i feel like western news and media is biased more towards how we perceive things than giving the whole picture. We are made to be the big victims in this because we attacked a country whereas Japans own hostage problems were virtually ignored and yet there own forces were there to peacekeep only and never involved in any assault whatsoever that deserved kidnap and execution reprisals. I hear about this news from asian websites that gave full world media and news and not just that which effects the west.

[booksworth]

The problem is the World Wide bit - how do you control web sites in other countries?

[newtron]

Internet Police!

[roomby]

I agree that it is impossible and probably undesirable to police all websites. However, it might be good if there was some sort of standard that sites could apply for - something like a badge that they can earn, that shows the site has been vetted and found to be accurate. A bit like the security standards that sites use when you are buying online. Perhaps some of the large search engines could get together and fund/regulate it? Users would then find it easier to identify reliable sources of information, but the Web would still be largely unregulated. What do you think?

[newtron]

Sounds like a good idea to me roomby. 

[keltik]

the web is an expression of somebodys opninions ideas and as free speach is sorta a right in this country, restricting web content is very much like restricting what you can say. However i do feel freedom of speech is a big con, you cant say ive got a bomb to the queen and you cant burst into flames yelling allah in front of the whitehouse