First the Web was chaotic. Then came Google, with a mission to organize the world’s online information. And all was well.

Then came online government databases, with all the data a citizen muckraker might want. But, as their information expanded, they too became chaotic. And along trotted Watchdogging 101, with a mission to teach users how to make sense of the chaos.

The Sunlight Foundation’s Watchingdogging 101 acts as a middle man (middle-dog), matching straightforward questions — How much is my representative worth? — with the pertinent page from somebody else’s database. Mainly it directs users to the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets, which has become kind of a government database Wikipedia, with enough knowledge to keep one person busy for … a long time. Especially if she’s not used to navigating millions of pages of informatoin.

Let’s be clear. Watchdogging 101 is not the new place to go for answers. It is a website dedicated to process, which, to its credit, is exactly what it promises: how to do research on money and politics.

Watchdogging 101’s meta-information serves as a useful primer not only on where to go, but on what to do once you get there. Regarding politicians’ personal finances, Watchdogging 101 helpfully notes, “Investigating the details of a member’s assets can … reveal potential conflicts of interest between a member’s duties to their constituents and the shape of their personal fortune.” They don’t do the math for you, but they point you to the places you can get the dirt.

The other interesting thing about Watchdogging 101 is that it reveals a bit of the techie culture that drives online investigations, in which database design and functionality are as worthy of comment as the data itself. Regarding the “Spartan” website of the U.S. Senate’s Office of Public Records, “Watchdogging 101 sadly notes, “It’s not pretty, but here it is.”

And this seems to be part of the point: every culture of experts has its own methods and biases. Ever listened to English Ph.Ds discuss Lacan? Ironically, databases like Open Secrets risk becoming exclusive, if only because its users have become so adept and its content so refined. This is the same thing that plagues open source projects in general – they become distant and complicated to the people who benefit the most from them. Watchdogging 101, if running the risk of being a bit too basic, brings the information back into the realm of the masses.