meiert.com Survey Results

Published on Oct 13, 2008 (updated Aug 6, 2023), filed under misc (feed). (Share this on Mastodon or Bluesky?)

This post is partially outdated.

It’s one and a half months since I asked for your feedback about meiert.com, and I’ve finally decided to publish some of the results. I also wanted to specifically reply to some comments and suggestions. And I wanted to thank everyone who participated!

The survey will still stay up and running until the end of time. I figured that it doesn’t do harm to keep it live, so feel free to share your thoughts now or later, too, if you haven’t already.

Questions

As of today, the Likert scale questions revealed a great standing of this site, one that I’m quite happy about, and one that makes me work hard to maintain and improve.

• When it comes to quality of content, 97.92% chose “good” or “excellent,” scoring a pleasing 4.562 on a 1-5 scale.
• The design of this site has been rated “good” or “excellent” by 71.88% (3.896), the most important question for me being if the design works though.
• 79.79% of all participants rated posting frequency “average” or “good,” and 13.83% even thought it’s “excellent” (3.809).
• Technical quality has been considered “good” or “excellent” by 97.92% (4.552).
• Overall, 94.79% rated meiert.com “good” and “excellent” (4.354).

Comments and Suggestions

There have been many great comments. Still I’m only publishing four of them which receive three replies:

weblog {
  font-family: ugly;
}

The most vocal comment concerning this site’s font choice. I suspect this to be related to display problems with Cambria as the primary font, or different fallbacks on Linux distributions, respectively, however I ask for more details if there are issues, and otherwise patience since I regularly test and adjust.

Sometimes your statements seem a bit arrogant, because you’re very confident about them. I know you’re really a great expert, but from time to time it would be good to say that it’s your well-grounded opinion, so it doesn’t look like the only ultimate solution.

Sometimes, the author seems a little […] fundamentalist and pedant on some of his articles, specially when he talks against CSS frameworks, or resets, in an extreme position (“this is bad, this is harmful”), and sometime it looks like his ego is deeply involved.

While I try to stress that opinions can be dangerous and to go for arguments most of the time, I understand that my communication style can be a little “strict.” I hope that recent posts introduced a different style, however I’ll aim for a more moderate tone that provides additional arguments. (I enjoy being strict though, and some things don’t benefit from sugar-coating.)

It’s good to see that there are some people willing to weather the endless storm of web-gimmickry […].

I considered quoting other compliments, but I like this comment most as I think it reflects a good observation. Our industry and our profession are in constant motion and face a lot of innovation—but quite some of it is no real innovation, and not all of it matters. I’m glad that my readers—you—recognize that I’m not a party pooper but genuinely concerned, and that I do share experience just as much as I encourage other people to share theirs.

Thank you all.

About Me

I’m Jens (long: Jens Oliver Meiert), and I’m a web developer, manager, and author. I’ve been working as a technical lead and engineering manager for companies you’ve never heard of and companies you use every day, I’m an occasional contributor to web standards (like HTML, CSS, WCAG), and I write and review books for O’Reilly and Frontend Dogma.

I love trying things, not only in web development and engineering management, but also in other areas like philosophy. Here on meiert.com I share some of my experiences and views. (I value you being critical, interpreting charitably, and giving feedback.)