Blog 7

For this weeks learning task we had to evaluate some websites and discuss their authenticity.

www.haggishunt.scotsman.com -
4 clues that give away that this site is a spoof -

• 
  Haggis is something you eat. it is a pudding made with liver & stomach etc of a sheep.
• 
  the "Haggis" looks like a platypus which is only found in Australia not Scotland
• 
  The website ends in .com, which means it is a commercial website, if it was real it would end in .org
• 
  under the list of what the Haggis's look like there is a rare "golden" haggis and there are no species that have a "rare golden" anything.

www.molossia.org
4 Clues that give away this site is a spoof -

• 
  the site doesn't say exactly where Molossia is, it gives several different places contained within the US which don't link up
• when describing why Molossia is called it says that - " "morro", which means small rock or small hill, the suffix "ssia" being added because it sounds good." which is obviously supposed to be funny, not serious.
• 
  there are only 4 citizens in Molossia
• 
  you have to email the government before you visit Molossia

www.martinlutherking.org
my expectations for this site -
i think this site will be about Martin Luther King and all the great things he did for America, and it will also have a copy of his speech "I have a dream".
the website address makes the viewer to the site immediately know that it will contain information about Martin Luther King.

My first impressions of the site -
i think this is a spoof site because it has quotes of him saying "I’m not a negro tonight" and a video he made called "The brothas' be peaceful in da' hood".

My thoughts on the website after looking at it thoroughly -
This website is clearly defamatory to Martin Luther King calling him a "plastic god" & saying that his book "stride towards freedom" was plagiarized from numerous sources. They also call him a "sexual degenerate, an America-hating Communist, and a criminal betrayer of even the interests of his own people." this website also talks about things that may not have happened - and as a viewer I can’t be sure because it gives no proof.
I had a look at who published the site "Stormfront" - www.stormfront.org - and they seem to be associated with the K.K.K. fighting for "white pride". So this website was clearly bias and unsupported.

5 things i learned in this lecture -

• What the ends of the websites mean eg. - .com - commercial nature, .net - a network - used when .com is not available, .org - a non profit website, used to state an idea
• the www. is only one part of the internet, there's email etc.
• that the internet and the net are different
• that Tim Berners - Lee made the internet in 1989 as a way to facilitate sharing research and information
• there are plenty of spoof websites out there and you have to be careful of what you believe.