Poor Website -- Informal Memo Purpose /

¶ … Poor Website -- Informal Memo

Purpose / Opening Statement

It is difficult to know how many new websites are being put up every day but clearly the numbers are enormous. Meanwhile, the purpose of this paper is to locate a spiritually-related website that needs changes; also, the purpose is to evaluate it. Hence, in advance it should be clear that when looking for a spiritually-related website on the Internet, a user wants a site that clearly spells out what it offers, is user-friendly as far as links and has an obvious informative purpose with credibility. In that regard, the website called "Constellation Seven" is among the most cluttered, confusing, prosaic and artistically disastrous to be found on the Web. This paper discusses this terrible website and suggests how it could be made better and more usable.

Research Method

By going into Google and typing in "the worst websites" or "websites that suck" lists comes up with several categories of bad websites in need of serious review and reorganization.

Current Problems with the "Constellation Seven" Website

This site is located on the World Wide Web at www.constellation7.org. The home page is crammed with information that the user doesn't need to know and the wallpaper is absolutely hideous, with strange little globules everywhere. "To view this sight as intended allow plugins & Java applets to run," the user is told. The sight "uses frames install Firefox to scroll Samsung webframes" is written in one line with no breaks. Clearly this is an amateurish, hackneyed, pathetic example of a website. And although the home page is ugly, cluttered, hard to use and a very annoying sound comes on when a person launches the site (which sounds like a commercial jetliner taking off in one's living room) the home page does offer a list of religious links on the left side ("Salvation," "Creation," "Prophecy" and several other topics).

A person can very quickly learn the theological perspective of the organization (or persons: They are antagonistic towards science. It is legal and ethical to take a position that is essentially based on religious dogma, but a certain degree of credibility is necessary. According to this site, evolution is "…a ridiculous notion"; and if a user takes the time to watch the videos "…you will see that the site decimates evolution theory." If "…you think the earth is millions of years old and mankind evolved from monkeys…YOU ARE UTTERLY WRONG!" It screams. If those that put this website up had a bit more class and grace, they would have avoided making their presentation sound like that of a crackpot that has gone off the deep end of reality. The site is angry, disorganized and frankly offensive to anyone other than those that believe in the narrow, adolescent ideas put forward.

Scrolling down further the user comes to a page called "Constellation Seven Revelation Ministries For Christ," but on the same page in an awkward box the message is: "Sorry, your browser doesn't support Java." A couple pages below that page is a very confusing box that apparently is an advertisement. "Zebra Industries (Orogenesis Nova) LTD." The visitor who is curious about what this box represents might guess that it is just another religious message, but there are two phone numbers and an address in Hong Kong. The image of a zebra is presented with a Christian cross overlaid; below is a passage from 1 Peter 2:24: "Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed" (Constellation, p. 10).

It is doubtful that Peter actually was referring to zebras in that passage, and this contributes to the sense that this site is based on a twisted theology that only a small percent of Christians would truly relate to.

Findings

Can the materials on this website be trusted? In a website called "Common Sense Media," students are urged to recognize that because of the "ease of publishing on the Internet" anything, true or false, helpful or destructive, can be online. The point is, alert students should be able to see that you can't simple trust a site because someone built it (hence it is there) or because it is attractive (www.commonsensemedia.org).

On the website called "Science Direct" (www.sciencedirect.com) there are "indicators" a person can look for in order to determine the validity of any website. Is it friendly to use? Is it easy to navigate? Does it have interactive features? Is it efficient? Does it have Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)? The answers to these five questions: no, no, no, no, and no. Actually, this site is easy to criticize because it is so awkward and ugly, but since anyone can put up a website and presumably most people who go to the trouble of posting a website believe in what they are presenting, it is inexcusable to create a site that is so full of radical, wildly irrational statements based allegedly on the Christian faith.