Is it just me, or has the Internet been inundated with clueless twits in recent years?
Oh, surely you've noticed them. I'm talking about the AOLamers, the spammers, and all the other idiots who do their best to make the Internet as mind-numbingly banal as anything Orwell or Huxley could've dreamed up. Mediocrity is everywhere on the net, and the sad part is that these people really think that their pages of Doom cheats and "k00l warez codez" are something to celebrate. Hell, some of 'em even think by spamming everyone they know and all the newsgroups they can find, they really will "Make Money Fast!" instead of being arrested for participation in a pyramid scheme.
Anyway, I'm kicking off this week's discourse with some words about Web content. (Keep waiting; I'm sure I'll manage to give all the rest of them their time in this spotlight.) A lot of people are duplicating resources on the Web, and this primarily stems - in my experience - from not looking to see what's out there to begin with. I mentioned last week that I have been known to design websites for a living. I won't bore you here with the technical aspects of site construction, primarily because there are tons upon tons of sites out there devoted to such matters, so I feel no need to contribute to the very problem I'm railing about. Instead, I'm going to say a few things about site content.
When you set out to create a website, you should ask yourself a few questions:
If you answer "no" to any of those questions, it's time to pick a different topic. Let's take the archetypal Doom Cheats page as an example. It passes the first test, because people do want to know those codes. If you're ready to write a page on 'em, I hope you can pass the second and third tests - otherwise, face it: you're clueless. (Don't worry, we can help. Send donations to Rev. Bob at the email address below...US currency only, please, and in small denominations.) However, the page flunks the last question; this topic is necessarily limited in scope, and everything to be said on it is already out there several times over. This doesn't mean, in this example, that the author has nothing worthwhile to contribute to Doom discussion on the Web - just that he should cover a different area. Perhaps some time with a level editor would give him some unique content to build a page around.
In other words, if a website's just a mishmash of things that can just as easily be found elsewhere on the Web, then it serves no purpose. I realize this is a radical idea, but maybe it'll catch on one day: content matters.
This leads me into my second category of net idiots. How many times have you received email (or seen a website, et al.) that looks like it was written by a dyslexic kindergartener, and attached at the bottom is a note that expresses his belief that content is all that matters, and he knows his grammar is bad, so he doesn't want you to send him email about it?
Yes, content matters - but so does structure. One of my friends perhaps said it best: "Content is a message carried on the back of grammar." Without attention to grammar and syntax, your message won't matter...because it won't be read. And please, don't even get me started on spelling mistakes. I can understand simple typos in email or in a chat room, and that's fine - those are generally time-sensitive methods of communication which necessarily exclude the use of correctional tools like spell-checkers. However, there's no excuse for writing a web page that looks more like alphabet soup with a sprinkle of punctuation than coherent thought. (I should point out at this time that Mike's Rant is a product of intentional linguistic considerations, not illiteracy.) Now, I'm not saying you should have an English teacher check your work for comma splices and nitpicky mistakes, but some attention to grammar would be nice.
Of course, that's not the only sort of email idiocy. How many times have you subscribed to an email list, only to see repeated requests to that list from a clueless twit who wants the listmembers to "stop sending me stuff!" - like we're targeting him on purpose. Look, you moron, you had to subscribe to get the list in the first place. When you did, you got a message with INSTRUCTIONS on how to unsubscribe. Is it my fault you were too clueless to archive 'em? (This brand of git is related to those guys that read newsgroups and see messages that call for email responses only, yet respond in the newsgroup anyway.) This type of idiocy got so out of control on some lists I was on that I wrote Web pages to institute point-and-click subscription and unsubscription...and some of 'em still couldn't figure it out.
Speaking of filling out forms, how hard is it to read a couple of instructions? I used to maintain a site for some friends of mine who run a live-action Vampire game. On this site is a list of links to other such games' Web pages. Now, common sense would seem to dictate that if you didn't have a Web page, it'd be pretty pointless to try to get on a list of Web pages, right? Wrong. I tried explaining this concept to the first few people, then I put the requirement in the instructions on the form submission page. That still didn't work, but since I amplified the language a bit (read: ranted and yelled), people seem to have gotten the message. Of course, as soon as I say that, I'll get a submission to the contrary....
I guess what I'm trying to say is, while I like the net being available to everybody, I kinda miss the old days when being on the net meant you knew something. Yeah, the clueless were around even then, but at least you had the reassurance that they had to have some amount of skill to even be there. Is it really so much to ask that people consider the impression they make by being net idiots? In this realm, our language skills are really the only way people have to evaluate us - so if we want them to come away with a favorable impression of our ability to express ourselves, we need to take that extra time, think, and write clearly. Otherwise, our content may be worth reading, but nobody will bother.