The Fifth Assignment - Trustworthiness of Websites

This week's assignment was to find one trustworthy and one untrustworthy website. We settled on Onepopz as the untrustworthy (http://onepopz.com/) and Last.fm as the trustworthy site (http://last.fm/).

Here are the five arguments for Last.fm, supporting it being trustworthy:

1. The website's appearance is professional: it looks thoughtfully designed and marketable.

2. Ease of use: the website's structure is simple and clear. There is only what you need, nothing more, nothing less. Plus there are no advertisements.

3. The quality of pictures is high. The pictures are about musicians, and they're official promo pictures. This gives the website credibility.

4. The quality and style of text: there is not much written text on the website, but the bits included are grammatically correct and concise. The style is neutral, not flattering or too emotional. This adds to the sense of trustworthiness.

5. The website does not ask for anything unreasonable from the user's part. Creating a simple user profile with the basic information is all that is required, and it is free.


Here are the five arguments against Onepopz.

1.  Onepopz is full of stuff that makes the website hard to navigate. The content seems to flood through the screen all over the user. Simply too much stuff on display at once.

2. Style and quality of text: it's bad for the most part. There are no grammatical errors, but the style of writing is too emotional and advertisement-like; there are overtly personal expressions here and there, which almost jump in the face of the reader. It's all just so messy and unprofessional. This takes away a big chunk of credibility.

3. The quality of the content: it's quite low. The website seems to consist primarily of gossip and articles with informational value that is practically next to nothing. Content like this does not give a good impression.

4. One main section is dedicated to news and articles about a single band. This act of highlighting a certain artist gives an impression of Onepopz being some kind of a fansite, and thus, at least seemingly, may give away a semblance of one-sidedness. This is of course a bad thing for the overall credibility of the site.

5. Another main section on the main page is dedicated to the reality show X Factor. This raises the question if the website is somehow linked to it - in another words, Onepopz may not be an independent website, but on the leash of some production company or something along those lines. This possibly being the case, objectivity and the trustworthiness of the reportage are of course compromised.

-JS