http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

In Search for Quality Web Content

Noel YAVO, MD Woyaa

ADF '99 Exhibition

Addis-Ababa, Ethiopia 24-28 October 1999

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

• Context

• Objective

• Evaluation Rules and criterias

• Working procedure

• Evaluation Survey

• Evaluation results

• Recommendations

• Conclusions

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

Context

• Exponential growth

• High user expectations

• Specific issues

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

• Assess the African Web content

• Recommend an approach for improving the quality of the content.

• Areas of Education, Science, Culture, Public information and Community development

• Present in an integrated Web site open to all

Objective

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

• Defined and made available on the project Web site to evaluators

• Grouped into relevant and easily understood and measured categories

• Contents and Credibility, Design and Navigation, Interactivity and Multimedia techniques

• African Web sites

• Measured from 1 to 5

Evaluation Rules & Criterias

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

• 1. Sites Pre-selection by Internet users, Woyaa! and UNESCO will pre-select between 20 and 30 for each category

• 2. Evaluation based on short list by evaluators using Web-based interactive evaluation form

• 3. In each category, the votes for each site have been aggregated and sites have been ranked.

• 4. An electronic forum, mailing-list

• 5. Best 50 sites selected are awarded TOP50 mention listed on the TOP50 African Web site

Working Procedure

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

• Content & Credibility

• Design & Navigation

• Interactivity & Multimedia

Evaluation Survey

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

CATEGORY Overall Sites

AVG All categories 3,4 310AVG Community Development 3,3 36AVG Culture 3,1 50AVG Education 3,2 38AVG Public Information 3,6 159AVG Sciences 3,1 30

Evaluation Results

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

Evaluation Results

CRITERIA Overall

Content 3,4 Credibility 3,5 Navigation 3,6 Design 3,4 Interactivity 3,4

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

• High proportion of non-african sites on Africa

• High proportion of sites hosted abroad (US, CA, FR, UK)

• Acceptable credibility and navigability

• To-be-improved content, design, interactivity, Xmedia

• Insufficient Education, Community development sites

• Un-avalability rate 5%

• Long access transit routes

• Promotion techniques

• Non-South-african sites (70/30)

• Design skills (graphics, HTML, interactivity)

Evaluation Results

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

• Design skills (graphics, HTML, interactivity)

• Low-usage of security mechanism

• National orientation or multinational sites

• International, NGO funding, Personal Sites

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

• Increase number of sites in of Education, Sciences and Community development

• Increase volume of information contents produced by Africans with emphasis to accuracy and currency

• Public sector institutions as well as International organizations to increase their example role and provide incentives and infrastructures supporting public content initiatives

• Initiatives that improves the skills (design, content production)

• Common Web hosting and management tools and infrastructures that guaranty the availability, quality and performance

Recommendations

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

Recommendations

• Online training and education resources for digital content and Web sites designers

• Increase the use of Web techniques (meta tags) for insuring sites visibility

• Initiatives (policy and mechanism) to insure copyrights protection and provide incentive to put content online

• Information and awareness campaigns on the digital society requirements, opportunities and threats

• Definition of sites design and production standards and build-up of common / shared Web resources for communities (education, development, sciences)

• Regional and pan-African Web sites and content production or management initiatives

http://www.woyaa.com/topweb/

• The number of Web sites built by Africans and hosted in Africa as well as the number of African netters has significantly increased despite the limited information society infrastructure.

• The higher costs for producing and managing Web contents combined with lack of copyrights protection and technical skills as well as the lack of adequate revenue generating items prevent a rapid and quality build-up.

• Public sectors have a key role to play to show the example, supporting training and education initiatives as well taking the measures