By Martin Baker

　　咸来 选注

　　曾有人戏言：“你可以在网上找到你想要的一切。”对许多人来说，网络已成为一个最大、最方便快捷的资料库。但也有人说网络是个大垃圾场。如何让网络成为你的得力助手呢？

　　In 1961 Federal Communications Commission chairman Newton Minot said that television was "a vast wasteland." The World Wide Web is much larger and has an even wider range of quality. So if you are looking for high-quality resources on the Web—for school, for personal research, or for fun—or if you need to evaluate the quality of a given Web site, it helps to follow a few basic steps (or risk getting lost in the biggest wasteland yet).

　　Q: What is a web site's "address"?

　　A: Every page on the World Wide Web has a unique identifier, the Uniform Resource Locator, or URL (在Internet的WWW服务程序上用于指定信息位置的表示方法). This is also called the web site's "address." The root of each URL ends with a top-level domain. There are two types of top-level domains: generic (普通的) top-level domains and country code domains.

　　Q: What are the main generic top-level domains?

　　A: All of the generic top-level domains have three letters:.com, .net, and .org are available to businesses, organizations, and individuals anywhere in the world..gov is reserved exclusively for institutions of the United States government.

　　.edu is reserved for educational institutions in the United States.

　　.mil is reserved exclusively for branches of the United States military.

　　.int is reserved for organizations established by international treaties.

　　Q: What are other top-level domains?

　　A：In November 2000 the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) announced its intention to add seven new top-level domains: .info, .biz, .name, .pro, .museum, .coop, and .aero. These should be available in 2001.

　　Country code domains have two letters (for example, .us for United States, .ca for Canada, and .mg for Madagascar). A full list of country code domains is available from the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. The country code identifies the location of the computer that hosts a given Web site.

　　Q: What identifies a web site's reliability (可靠性)?

　　A: Anyone can publish pretty much anything on the Web. A reliable Web site should include the name and credentials (背景) of its author and a bibliography (参考书目) of print and online sources used to create the materials on the site. You may have to look around a little to find this information, but if you can't find it anywhere you should think seriously about not using the site for research.

　　Ideally the author should provide a way for users to make comments or ask questions. These days many site maintainers are wary (机警、留意) of Web users who contact them asking for help with specific research or homework assignments, but a trustworthy (可信赖的) author should be willing to provide information about his or her credentials and sources. Many Web pages have an "About" section that provides information about the author, including an e-mail address.

　　Q: Is there any other details we should pay attention to?

　　A: Spelling mistakes and grammatical errors are bad signs. Look to see if a site includes the date it was created and the date it was last revised. (修订) (Not all reputable (著名的) sites include this information, but it's comforting to see it.) You can also tell a lot from the links within a site—if many are broken, the page may not have been updated (更新)in a long time.

　　Q: Is it true that everything can be found on the web?

　　A: The Web has a lot to offer, but it has limitations. Despite the hype, you still can't find "everything" there. Some materials, because of cost, demand, or copyright issues, are still available only in print. Very current information, such as news and statistics, is readily available on the Web from reliable sources. Some materials published before the 1980s, however, have not moved to the Web, and because they were produced with nondigital (非数字化的) technologies, some of them never will. So, the bottom line (结果) is: if you are looking for information about the movie Gladiator(《角斗士》2000), you'll find all you need on the Web. But if you are looking for a book-length biography about the Emperor Commodus (罗马皇帝康茂德(161-192)实行暴虐统治，精神逐渐失常，自以为是大力神赫丘利转世，经常到斗兽场当角斗士，被一摔跤冠军勒死), you're more likely to find it in print sources.