Miles sent me this link: rant

I really disagree with this guy. To summarize, he seems irritated that the web is becoming flooded with weblogs and crummy websites. He states that programs like blogger have made it too easy for people to make website, thus lowering the overall quality of most websites, since they don’t require thought or skill to produce.

I’ve heard this argument before. They said it when programs like Quark Xpress and Pagemaker came along, referring to page layout. They said it about the web when WYSIWYG editors came along. They probably said it about the printing press.

The fatal flaw with this logic is the idea that bad websites (and I’m not arguing that there is a staggering number of them) lower the overall quality of the web experience. If you don’t like a site, the solution is simple: don’t look at it. Just because you personally don’t like a website doesn’t mean that person should be allowed to have one and enjoy the experience. Just because the only value a website has is personal (to the person who created it) doesn’t invalidate that website’s value.

Several of my friends over the years have made comments along the lines that they don’t have a personal web site because they don’t think they’re worthwhile. “No one wants to see another site about you and your puppy and photos of your girlfriend.”

I have a personal website. It consists of stuff about me, photos of me and my girlfriend and links to other sites. It’s a typical home page. I enjoyed making it, and I enjoy having it available on the web. Therefore, it has value. If you don’t like my website, you may feel free to not visit. I don’t particularly care one way or another. But don’t try to tell me that I can’t have a personal site, or that my site is lowering the overall quality of the internet experience.

The point is made in the article at the top that by making it easy for everyone to have a website, the web has been reduced to the lowest common denominator. I would be willing to be money that even the man who designed the website that article is on started somewhere with a really crummy website that had no original content. By going through the learning process and starting at the lowest rung, he learned the hard way what’s good and what’s not. If someone had stopped him from having a site because he had nothing interesting to say, or no good way to present it, he would never have reached the point he’s at now.

You can’t expect people to start out experts in a field. I see a great number of crummy websites in the internet, but it doesn’t irritate me, or make me feel that the overall quality of my experience was lowered. I just go to look at a better site, and make some notes on what not to do on my own.