I was trying to track down the validity of an email that was forwarded to me today. I typed the subject and name of the alleged author into the Yahoo! search engine and then next thing I knew there were over 10 pages of websites with the text of this email posted on them. I only scanned through 5 pages. Of these 5 pages, there were easily 45 sites other than Urban Legends and Snopes that discussed the email.
Some days it seems like a losing battle. People receive a cute story and so much want to believe it is true or that the circumstances surrounding the article being penned are true, that they don’t even check.
It’s ok to enjoy stories whose origin and validity have not been verified. That fact, however, should be stated. Truth of email forwards should not be assumed. Some days I receive three different versions of the same story. They are all good stories. But if any one of those stories is to be published somewhere, it requires any verification possible to determine the truthfulness of the story. If such truthfulness cannot be verified, the story is listed with the words “Internet Legend”… just so people know what exactly they are reading.
The following websites are usually good for checking the validity and acquired research on an internet legend:
www.urbanlegends.com
www.snopes.com
If they don’t have what you are looking for, type a short description of the story into Yahoo!, Google, or some other search engine and see what information pops up. Remember, posting a story on a website doesn’t make the story true.
1 comment:
lessons................
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