Herald Forum

George W Bush has the lowest IQ of any US President in history. A Romanian couple named their son Yahoo because they met on the internet. The sweetener aspartame has been proved responsible for an epidemic of cancer and multiple sclerosis.

None of the above is true. But each statement has been published as fact all over the world-wide web.

That's the problem with the greatest information resource ever known: it's full of rubbish. Each time you visit a new web page, you're taking a massive gamble: can you trust what you're reading? Try Googling Martin Luther King. Within the first few links you'll find one claiming to be "the truth a valuable resource for teachers and students". It's nothing of the sort: it's actually a lot of thinly disguised hate from a white supremacist organisation. Not everyone - especially children - will have the education or intelligence to realise.

In the old days, when we relied on books, journals and newspapers for our information, it was a lot simpler: every fact in front of you had been checked and vouched for by a team of editors. Now, though, anyone with half an hour to spare can set up a website and claim to be an authority.

Which is why the web needs quality control. To be precise, what it needs is an international commission to stand up for accuracy. There's already the W3 Consortium, which sets standards for the coding of web pages. So why not have one to set standards for well, truth?

Obviously, there's no way every single one of the many billions of web pages out there can be individually audited or edited. Instead, this organisation - which, for the sake of argument, we'll call the Internet-Wide Accuracy Commission, or iWac for short - would slowly but surely produce a list of approved websites. Just as the W3C offers the best coders a logo they can stick on their site, the iWac would have a recognisable symbol that could be displayed by those who met the grade. Similarly, its homepage would act as an authoritative guide to the very best of the internet - the sites you could trust - and warn what to avoid.

The Herald's website, for instance (just to pick a biased example) would get a thumbs-up: it is part of a long tradition of fair and accurate reporting, as are many other newspaper sites worldwide. Snopes, run by the estimable David and Barbara Mikkelson, dedicated to exposing internet untruths - such as those at the beginning of this piece - would be a dead cert, as would such reputable sites as Bartleby and the Internet Movie Database.

But Wikipedia, the noble but flawed public-access encyclopaedia, wouldn't make the grade. It can be edited by anyone, meaning its information is always in flux - and it is a popular target for pranksters. Just ask the American comedian Sinbad, whose Wikipedia entry was the other week repeatedly altered to claim that he'd died. (Never heard of him? Well, why don't you look him up on the internet? Er, because it might tell you he was dead. See what I mean?) This doesn't mean Wikipedia isn't a valuable resource: it's just not one that can be trusted as a primary source. But how many users - again, especially children - realise that?

The postmodernists among you might quibble with the notion of absolute truth. But the iWac wouldn't seek to ban or impose. It would be about establishing a constantly monitored top tier of trustworthy pages, and warning users of fakes and hoaxes.

So who would they be, these iWac luminaries guiding our way? Well: given that we'd be asking them to make informed judgments with no specific deadline, the ideal people would be intelligent volunteers with an interest in preserving the integrity of the web. We'd want internet big-hitters such as Apple's Steve Jobs (a man outspoken enough to have no reason not to be impartial) or the aforementioned Mikkelsons; philosophers and cultural commentators; plus eager volunteers, such as those who hang about chat sites bemoaning the state of the web. (I'd certainly put my hand up.) And because they'd be working purely for the love of the internet, rather than for cash, there'd be no chance of backhanders or bribes.

Nobody's saying these volunteers would be infallible. But ask yourself what you would trust more: a random result from a Google search, or a site vouched for by a team of independent eyes?

A report earlier this month claimed the introduction of computers in British classrooms has had a negligible effect on exam results. To be honest, I'm surprised it hasn't led to a complete collapse. We have a wealth of misinformation at our fingertips, and it's increasing every day. If teachers, librarians, parents, bosses and - well, each and every one of us - knew good people were out there slowly and diligently filtering the facts from the falsehoods, wouldn't the web, and the world, be a better place?

iWac or just iWacky: what do you think? Join the debate at forum.theherald.co.uk, or e-mail features@theherald.co.uk (with the subject line Think Tank). We'll bring you the best responses later in the week, and a new idea next Monday.