I don’t know what I don’t know

As a newspaper reporter, I was occasionally assigned to report on a topic I didn’t know well.

I learned that if you didn’t know what questions to ask, you risked being tricked.

When these assignments came my way, I was not willing to be taken advantage of due to my ignorance on the subject. How would I know what to question? He was vulnerable to all kinds of misinformation.

He didn’t know what he didn’t know.

At the risk of dating myself, I remember going to the public library and using the card catalog to do my research.

I never relied on a single book as a reference. I couldn’t rely on a book as a source in the same way that I would never use an interview as the only source for a story. I had to find out what else was available to me.

The same is true for today only in a different context: we have the Internet.

Think of the Web as a virtual library. The analogy I’m using is not just one source, like Google, to research.

Google is huge in its data collection. I love Google. I use it every day and find great information. Google opens up the world in amazing ways. No doubt.

However, Google is like using a book for all your research. There are more “books” at our disposal to find the information we seek besides Google.

The difference in these virtual books ranges from marginal to quite significant in what is available on any subject.

Search engines classify information based on mathematical algorithms. Basically, it’s a popularity contest. The websites that get the most hits get the highest rating. Also, the companies that pay more money also get a great location. Below is a short list of search engines:

Google

AOL

yahoo

AOL

yahoo

Bing

High view

Excited

galaxy

the whole network

The directories are compiled by real people. Directory panels evaluate a website and then rank it based on content alone.

Directories:

• AboutUs.org: A wiki-based web directory.

• Ansearch: Web search and directories focused on the US, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

• Best of Web Directory: Lists well-designed, content-rich websites categorized by topic and by region. This is a paid service.

• JoeAnt: A community of editors from the now-defunct directory edited by Go.com volunteers.

• Open Directory Project (also known as ODP or dmoz) – The largest directory on the Web. Your open content is reflected on many sites, including the Google Directory, as of July 20, 2011.

• Starting Points Directory: A human-edited master directory that organizes sites by category.

• Virtual Library of the World Wide Web (VLIB): The oldest directory on the Web.

•Yahoo! Directory – The first service that Yahoo! offered.

Metasearch engines are search engine sites that can include anywhere from 10 to 90 search engines on one site.

Metasearch engines:

infospace.com

info.com

dogpile.com

excite.com

Search.com

WebCrawler.com

ixquick.com

mamma.com

metatracker

Try an experiment. Choose a simple topic, such as “publishing” and search for it in several of these “books”. I bet you will be surprised at how much information you get from each of them.

I don’t know what I don’t know.

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