Finding Excellent web sites on Africa.

What is it that makes people interested in Africa?

Is Africa exotic? Is it the scenery,South Africa or adventure that captivates you? Do you desire knowledge? Would you like to trace your roots?

But how do you find the best information on Africa. The best solutions involve a combination of a few things: Ask an expert on Africa;Take a class at the community college ;Ask your friends or neighbors . This is what you had to do yesterday: before the web .

Yet if you start your search at a library, you will find that the information on Africa is available by way of a computer, possibly the same internet that you have at your home.

There are at least two kinds of web resources that you will see over and over again: the first kind is a search engine, you know, the old standards like Google or newer ones like ChaCha or a directory of existing sites: like DMOZ, which use humans working as librarians to pour over the internet sites, find the ones dealing with Africa and identify them for you.

There are some troubles using these tactics: Google's ranking algorithm for African sites is strongly impacted by the internet business of SEO (search engine optimization) which attempts take advantage of Google's methods to increase a web site's visibility and hence make it seem more important than it really is. This makes it harder to find the real good sources for information on Africa. SEO is big business for sites that get advertizing revenue on the internet, because search engines can make or break a web site. There are good and bad people useing these techniques who have not the slightest interest in Africa. In fact, any search engine using computer algorithms to analyse text is going to completely lose nuances in meaning like, searching for lectureship and get you tons of listings about getting training , or even worse, a rock band with the name 'The blue African Chargers". How many times haveyou had to dig down to the fifth page of the web search to find something really useful about Africa? More often than you wish!

A directory organized by humans like DMOZ will not suffer that kind of lanugage problem, but the editors of those directories are volunteers, with limited time and have to obey some odd rules about what makes an appropriate web site: many information rich sites can't even get listed. In fact, the decisions about what is good or not is under control of a very few people rules that are just too rigid: a junior editor often has a decision overturned by a another editor sometimes, for the most obscure reasons. They are well meaning, but can they really speak to be knowledgeable about all they do? The websites that are accepted may have to wait for months to get accepted . And the categories are limited, with few places to put new concepts. It takes months for a new category to be approved.

A successful alternative is the wikipedia, where everyone gets a shot at updating the site: and surprisingly, wikipedia has a very good track record of being precise, accurate,appropriate and, well, generally useful.

Now, in September 2008, there is a new start-up in web site ranking directories that uses the power of democracy to answer the question of which site is best, or at least as they put it: "which site has the most vava-voom!" That new venture is http://vava.vu/?Tag=Africa , a web domain out of the Pacific Island nation of Vanuatu. Vava.vu will let any web site be entered to be rated by the general public and given the tag Africa. The judging is simple: a web site on Africa has a rank and a 'statistical strength' associated with it: When someone visits vava.vu, those sites with weaker strength are put side by side, and it is up to the public to vote which site of the two is more appropriate. When enough votes are cast, the visitor will see the real top ten sites about Africa ,or any category: These sites are the ones that you, the public has approved. The idea is statistically solid in that a visitor only can compare two sites at a time: one will win and one will not. A visitor can't give a yea or nay to one site by itself because that would skew the results. The Best will rise: some sites will consistantly win out over other sites.

So if you are interested in Africa , you can go find the answers in several areas: Locally in the library, from friends, or on the internet at your favorite search engine, a directory like DMOZ or wikipedia. Or with the new alternative on the block: http://vava.vu/?Tag=africa

Article Source: http://worldofcompendium.com

J. Chord is fascinated by the internet since before it started. Knowledgeable about networking of computers he now follows the difficulties people have in locating the information about Africa that is so near, yet so far.

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