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The BEST Websites
The grab for “best website in the world” is up at Time.com. Rank your favorites to determine who gets it.
Among your options are GasBuddy, Yahoo! Answers, Zeer‘s in-depth nutritional information community, and PsychCentral, which I’d never heard of. Apparently, they help you self-diagnose, and see if you have a problem that requires a psychiatrist. If you do (what does that message look like: “YUP, YOU’RE NUTS-CRAZY. SEEK HELP NOW.”) you can find resources on the website.
Most of the nominated sites are good, but I haven’t seen one yet that I’d label BEST WEBSITE… IN THE WORLD. (The only way to say that is with a booming, diabolical voice.)
In fact, selection has to be based merely on the purported goals of each site, because if we’re evaluating all aspects (design, ease of use, etc) so many of them fail immediately.
See AskMen (which looks like it’s stuck in 1999) or amateur hour at ProFootballTalk. Their substance might be fantastic, but they’re eliminated from “best website” because they don’t grasp the whole picture.
Leaving that aside, how could any of these sites, in such disparate categories, be the best of the web? Rate My Professors looks fine, and I love Serious Eats, but THE BEST? No. Geni? No. The Nest? NO!
What are we looking for in a “best website” such that Penny Arcade (which I like [not love]) is currently topping the list?
Anita Hamilton discusses her selection process here, and admits that part of her criteria was simply newness. She didn’t want us to already know most of the sites on her list.
Perhaps Time’s 10 Essential Sites is a more reasonable ranking, but I still don’t agree with all their choices… or their description.
There are some sites that you go to over and over again that never fail. Here is our list of sites that you can trust.
Somehow TMZ is NOT on my list of can’t-live-withouts, and it’s most definitely not on my list of sites-to-trust.
