Hello! Welcome to stoptrusting.org.

What is this site?

stoptrusting.org is a collection of resources, guides, and discussions about finding information online. The name comes from the myth that sites ending in .org are inherently more trustworthy than .com or .net. That’s the kind of thing I’m here to correct.

Why did you create this site?

I wanted to create the media literacy resource I couldn’t find. Throughout school and my own research, I’ve done a lot of reading on navigating sources and there’s a lot of great information, but it also feels incomplete. Even the guides that try to provide an overview still tend to miss information. Worse, because the way information is shared has changed so rapidly myths like .org are prevalent, reputation is hard to verify, and even your own search engine can influence your findings. That’s why I’ve formatted this as a blog: it gives me the opportunity to go back and revise content as it becomes outdated, and to link to other resources that might be useful.

Who are you?

I’m just a college student who has to deal with all of this chaos and wanted to help people out. I wind up doing a lot of research, both for my classes and on my own time, which has forced me to develop a decent grasp of good research techniques. In addition, I have a background in IT and Computer Science which gives me a unique perspective on specifically digital research. I hope you find it useful!

Can I use information from this site?

Yes! Everything I publish to this site is licensed under Creative Commons BY-SA and the MIT License specifically so it is sharable. If you want the full legal rambling too, we’ve got that here. Use it for your reference, for your research paper, for anything you want. If you do anything neat, I’d love to hear about it as well!