How to Uncover Pseudo-Standardistas
Post from November 20, 2008 (ā» June 10, 2021), filed under Web Development.
This and many other posts are also available as a pretty, well-behaved ebook: On Web Development.
Thereās a growing and annoying group of developers that donāt help our attempts for more accessible, faster, more maintainable, and best practice web development: pseudo-standardistas. There are several ways to expose pseudos (apart from the hints Henri shared), the easiest being:
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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 validationās not everything). Try validating their site to see if they act accordingly (but be aware of HTML 5ā
<!DOCTYPE html>
āwhich is not recognized by the WDG and a few other validators). -
Pseudo-standardistas make maintenance mistakes like working with presentational ID and class names, and using (maybe even recommending) Conditional Comments or multiple style sheet references in the markup. This is a tough call (not everyone will appreciate this) and surely an advanced requirement (many peers donāt find it problematic to link to several style sheets out of their pagesā markup), but still a āred flagā when it comes to maintainability.
There are more telltales of pseudo-advocates of modern web development (I feel reminded of āvalid this or thatā badges), but at least in German-speaking countries thereās an awkward tendency to rest on laurels not deserved yet. I donāt mind decisive self-promotion and marketing (heck, itās Europeās small answer to Barack Obama writing this post), but we need to ask ourselves if thatās in the best interest of our industry.
About Me

Iām Jens Oliver Meiert, and Iām an engineering manager and author. Iāve worked as a technical lead for Google, Iām close to the W3C and the WHATWG, and I write and review books for OāReilly. Other than that, I love trying things, sometimes including philosophy, art, and adventure. Here on meiert.com I share some of my views and experiences.
If you have questions or suggestions about what I write, please leave a comment (if available) or a message.
Comments (Closed)
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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 Oliver Meiert said:
David, no, unfortunately not! I like āarmchair standardistaā! š
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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 W3Cās WBS; (c) when searching mail archives, check that those mails donāt just say āregretsā (in response to the announcement of a conference call): some people seem to send more āregretsā mails than anything else but donāt want to give up working group āparticipationā because it looks nice on their CVs (and book announcements).
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Perhaps my most comprehensive book: The Web Development Glossary (2020). With explanations and definitions for literally thousands of terms from Web Development and related fields, building on Wikipedia as well as the MDN Web Docs. Available at Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play Books, and Leanpub.