How to Uncover Pseudo-Standardistas
Jens Meiert, November 20, 2008.
This entry is filed under Web Development, Accessibility.
There is a growing and annoying trend that not quite supports healthy attempts for more accessible, faster, more maintainable, and best practice web development: Pseudo-Standardistas. There are several ways to unmask pseudos (apart from the hints Henri documented to spot them), the easiest being, to keep things simple:
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Some pseudo-standardistas claim to be member of standard bodies and organizations like e.g. W3C. However, a non-paper member participating in W3C work will usually have at least one results page of entries when searching for him or her, so try e.g. searching at Google for contributions on W3C mailing lists.
Searching does of course work for verifying contributions to other organizations, too.
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Pseudo-standardistas like to point out how great valid HTML is (it is, however validation’s not everything). Try validating their entire site to see if they act accordingly (however don’t be ignorant of HTML 5 –
<!DOCTYPE html>– which is not recognized by the WDG and a few other validators). -
You can recognize pseudo-standardistas by obvious maintenance slips like use of presentational ID and class names, or using (maybe even recommending) Conditional Comments or multiple style sheet references in the markup. This is a tough call (some people won’t fall in love with me for this) and surely an advanced requirement (as some “real” experts don’t bother linking to several style sheets out of their pages’ markup either), but still a valid “red flag” when it comes to maintainability.
There are definitely more specifics to pseudo-advocates of modern web development (feeling reminded of “valid this or that” badges, albeit meaning a completely different story), but at least in German-speaking countries there’s an awkward tendency to rest on laurels not quite in reach yet. I don’t mind “aggressive self-promotion and marketing” (hell, it’s Europe’s equivalent to Barack Obama writing this post), but we need to ask ourselves if that is in the best interest of our industry.
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Comments
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On November 20, 2008, 21:44 CET, Duluoz said:
Have you ever heard the term armchair quarterback? These are typically individuals who might have, or not, played some high school football, who think they can do better than the quarterbacks they watch on TV in their recliners. Perhaps there is such a thing as armchair standardistas?
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On November 24, 2008, 12:55 CET, Jens Meiert said:
David, not just “perhaps” I’m afraid, but in fact … however I like “armchair standardista”
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On November 27, 2008, 15:03 CET, Christophe Strobbe said:
Regarding point 1: (a) the mailing lists of some working groups are not public; (b) some other contributions have no public visibility, e.g. filling in questionnaires through the W3C’s WBS; (c) when searching mail archives, check that those mails don’t just say “regrets” (in response to the announcement of a conference call): some people seem to send more “regrets” mails than anything else but don’t want to give up working group “participation” because it looks nice on their CVs (and book announcements).
