Quality of the Web

When doing research on the web it becomes apparent that the quality of web site information degrades exponentially with the emergence of an increased amount of traffic on the internet. Virtually everyone in the United States has access to post information on the web, via blogs, forums, newsgroups etc... and many have not followed standard conventions. Therefore, I began to search for ways that I could filter through pages to find quality information. In doing so, I was also able to find a few sites to help web designers qualify their own work, so that it follows a given set of standars. The following is a list of resources I found to help assure quality web sites and tools that can help to design more effectively (descriptions are from the web sites):

1. Web Standards Project
• Founded in 1998, The Web Standards Project (WaSP) fights for standards that reduce the cost and complexity of development while increasing the accessibility and long-term viability of any site published on the Web. We work with browser companies, authoring tool makers, and our peers to deliver the true power of standards to this medium.
2. Watchfire WebXACT
• WebXACT is a verification tool that scans your web page, checking for a variety of issues, including quality, privacy, and accessibility.
  
3. Web Quality Assurance Tutorial
• In this tutorial you will learn how to build your web site to the highest quality.
• Learn to use the latest web standards.
• Learn how to make your web site more accessible and more readable.
4. W3C QA - How to achieve Web Standards and quality on your Web site?
• Here you will find easy, painless techniques and ideas to improve your Web site quality and make your Web site valid. This document is intended for HTML users, developers working on Web applications, and Web masters.
• Most of the Web sites on the Web are not valid. We may assume that this is the case for 99% of the Web pages, but there are no statistics to support this. It would be interesting to run a survey to prove that this case is indeed true.
5. Judging Quality on the Web (article from UCLA)
• Even after refining a query in a search engine, a researcher often retrieves a huge number of Web sites. It is essential to know how to evaluate Web sites for the same reasons you would evaluate a periodical article or a book: to ascertain whether you can rely on the information, to identify its inherent biases or limitations, and to see how or whether it fits into your overall research strategy.
6. eValid-Web Quality News

Now that I have presented some of the resources I found, will I actually use them? Time will tell, but if anyone has used any of these sites, drop me a line with your take. Good luck in your ventures!

Side note:
Check out this cool site on Leonardo da Vinci's Machine Collection