Can this site be relied upon?

There is a perception that because websites or blogs can be created by anyone, they are not worthy resources. In truth, this is one of their greatest strengths. Because they can be written by anyone, websites and blogs allow for an analysis that is relatively uncorrupted by political agendas, the pressures of an institution and the need to recoup the high costs or publishing and distributing a book.

The author of the site has post-graduate qualifications and is a published author. Although the author recognises that these qualifications and experiences would enhance the credibility of the site in the eyes of most people, the author doesn’t believe they should. This author's belief in the unimportance of qualifications may be an example of the author’s egalitarian values, or perhaps the author’s experiences with some of the more institutionalised reservoirs of knowledge that have not always shown a commitment to truth and honesty. Additionally, having experienced first hand how governments write history for their own advantage, the author is somewhat concerned that many citizens are inclined to place in government funded academics, publications and media outlets. In short, it is not only politicians in Communist countries that like to deceive, lie, and pursue their own agendas.

Readers of the site can have confidence that the site was compiled with objectivity in mind and without the pursuit of any agenda other than curiosity as well as a belief that society benefits from new perspectives. Relying upon it without question would be a foolish thing to do because like all forms of analysis, it is only as good as the thinking of the analyst at a particularly time and the quality of the material that was analysed at that time.

In the 12 years since it was first published, the site has undergone very significant revisions. Some of the revisions have been caused by discovering significant flaws in the books and primary sources that had been relied upon, and which had been widely accepted as credible resources. For example, when it was first created, the author had taken as fact information in published books which stated that Aborigines could not vote until 1967 and that Tasmanian Aborigines had been exterminated in a “black line” of genocide. As the author gained exposure to new material, the author was able to ascertain that the books were incorrect, which not only required a revision of material, but also sparked interest about why incorrect myths had been created and widely proliferated without question. To be more precise, if such basic and easily verifiable facts were so eagerly consumed and incorrectly proliferated, then it raised significant suspicions about what other myths may be circulating.

Admittedly, Google has made it easier to verify facts than it had been in the pre-Google era, and this makes it easier to forgive pre-Google authors for their indiscretions. Ironically, this increase of accuracy in the Google age would perhaps give weight to claims that ideas based on the analysis of information on the web may have a deal of factual accuracy lacking in ideas based on the analysis of information in the print world. With university academics like Lyndal Ryan defending her own dishonesty with claims that "historians are always making up figures", and web authors mocking Ryan's claims, future generations may well look upon the emergence of websites as correlating with a return to academic standards. Definately, a wikipedia entry is more reliable than many pre-Google textbooks. The only real liability of wikipedia is that it tends to be all facts with no analysis of the facts.

In regards to the content of this site, sometimes it has been possible to weigh up differing accounts and make a conclusion about which is the most plausible. At other times, such as in the analysis of war history, the level of propaganda and the restriction of information by government hierarchies, made it impossible to make any conclusions about what occured. To a lesser extent, universities have also engaged in propaganda and information restriction as part of their “culture wars” and much of their work needs to be approached with a critical mind as a consequence. For example, if a university decides that it is fine for academics to "make up" figures and use citations to pretend that were recorded in primary sources, then that university should not be associated with any kind of enlightened thinking.

To try to verify information in this site, it may be useful to apply the traditional journalist test. If the information can be found three times in three different sources then it can be relied upon sufficiently to write a story, (or use it in an essay.)  Of course that doesn’t mean that the information is true.

 The name of the author is not published because in Australia’s culture wars, there is significant pressure to adopt certain positions.  If the positions are adopted, then some factions will bestow benefits while others will exert some kind of sanction. The author simply wants to reflect and there is more to lose than gain in giving up anonymity. It is disappointing that so much negativity can be directed at someone who presents a novel idea, but it is a by-product of human nature.

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