When tragedy strikes somewhere in the world, especially when the news is breaking and the situation is confusing, readers increasingly head to the web first, seeking information and answers. Snagging those readers with search-clogging, click-baiting, hastily-written crap doesn’t give them the clarity they need. Rather, it increases fear and confusion, and proliferates misinformation. It’s irresponsible.
Kudos to Google for adjusting its algorithm to reduce stuff like this from drifting to the top of search lists, and for keeping its Crisis Response page up high with neutral, informative updates and message boards. But content farms, if they have to keep doing what they do, should really stick to what they’re good at: which is creating harmless and transparently useless posts like “How to draw a circle,” or “How to Open a Patio Umbrella,” which, I’m told, “can be a tricky task unless you know what you are doing.”
Hi Lauren, great piece. I found it because of the wikiHow mention. I'm glad you consider wikiHow one of the higher quality content farms, but we actually don't consider ourselves much of a content farm at all, since most of our articles are written & edited by volunteers. Also, anti-spam search engine DuckDuckGo banned eHow while placing wikiHow results automatically at #1 for all how-to searches. See: http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2011/02/04/duckduckgo-follows-content-farm-banning-with-promoting-wikihow-content
Anyway, thanks for the good read. For the record, we have a pretty amazing page on how to survive a nuclear attack; there's a lot of info there that would be relevant to any kind of nuclear disaster:
http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Nuclear-Attack
#1 Posted by Krystle, CJR on Thu 17 Mar 2011 at 02:43 PM
Jack Herrick, founder of wikiHow here. Thanks for pointing out that wikiHow is higher quality than the other sites you reviewed here. Me and thousands of volunteer wikiHow editors work hard towards our goal of building "the world's highest quality how-to manual." I wanted to add a few insights about the article that you mentioned, http://www.wikihow.com/Survive-a-Tsunami . Our goal with articles like this is to provide someone with no prior background on a topic, the single best article on the web to learn what they need to know. On that article, 72 editors compiled research from National Geographic, FEMA, US Geological survey information to boil down one easy to understand, step by step guide. Personally, and admittedly I'm biased here, but I think these 72 editors produced a better researched, more clearly written article than the other 9 links Google offers up when you search "How to Survive a Tsunami".
#2 Posted by Jack Herrick, CJR on Thu 17 Mar 2011 at 03:11 PM