You just read something on the Internet!(1)
But can you trust it?
So ask yourself...
- Who wrote it?
- Where are you reading it?
- When was it written?
Author
What do you know about the author?
- Do they know what they are talking about?
- What are their biases?
- What are they hoping to get out of this?
Website
It might be hard to learn about individual authors, so in addition look at the website serving the content.
- What motivates the website to serve this content?
- Does a company/organization/agency hold a stake that could bias this content?
- Does the website generally provide reliable information?
Date
The content might have been complete, accurate, and unbiased(2) when it was written. But if this was a long time(3) ago, then:
- By this time. none of it may be relevant.
- Despite being old, all of it may still be relevant.
- Most likely some of it is still relevant and some is not.
So what can you do?
Use your noggin!
- Research the author and the website.
- Validate content from multiple reliable sources.
- Make sure the information is still relevant today.
Use your noggin!
Footnotes
(1) Not just the Internet. If you read enough technical books about stuff you know, then it becomes readily apparent that just because something is published in a book doesn't mean it's true.
(2) Unbiased? No.
(3) What is a long time? Depends on the content. In software, five years is definitely a long time.
This page is up-to-date as of February 29th, 2020.
Some things change.
Some things stay the same.
Use your noggin.