Misinforming the community for money

Today I was fortunate enough to come across an article about negative space, which was a retort against an article about white space. Yes, I know they are the same thing, but I wanted to be cool so let me be. Anyways, when I read the article over at WDL the other day I left with the sinking feeling that I didn't come away from it with anything. The tone of the article made it seems as though it was going to be educational and help the reader gain a better understanding of whitespace, but that wasn't the case.

The article does nothing more than to post some screenshots and show you where they used space in the design. I'm not talking about whitespace, negative space or whatever else, the images just so how different elements of a design are separated. If you read the article do you leave with a feeling that you have a complete understanding of the function and importance of whitespace? It's almost like my mom telling me I need to keep my room clean and showing me pictures of other clean rooms.

Since I wrote Smashing Magazine Killed the Community (or Maybe It Was Me) some people have put a lot of blame on me for the backlash that the design community has been experiencing. Fact is, people had these feelings long before me. Maybe I shouldn't have focused the article on Smashing Mag, but if you haven't noticed an improvement on their site you are sadly mistaken. I didn't write the article for fame, I wrote it because the community was destroying itself and it seemed like nobody noticed it.

The article on WDL is an article that does more harm than good. I'm going to ignore the fact that I can only see the first 3 lines of the entry when I load the page while the rest is ads. You just can't write something like this that misinforms the community and think it is alright. It's careless. If you are writing an opinion piece then go for it, speak your mind, but when you are trying to lay down facts that simply aren't true it hurts everyone.

I just leave the article and site with a bad feeling like the author needed to get a new post up and decided to talk about whitespace without doing his research. The irony of a site talking about whitespace when the site itself lacks whitespace isn't lost on me either.

Yes, it's your site, your rules so you can write whatever you want. I'm not trying to control what happens on it. I just wish that more people took responsibility for the community that they are trying to be involved in and that means taking more responsibility for the things we write. You will still get the pageviews and still get paid so don't worry about that.

Even more troubling is that the WDL article will get more play than the one over at Get Finch, especially since it was written first.

I think you summed it up nicely. You come away from the WDL piece with no useful information to try and evaluate or put into practice. The Finch article makes you want to dig deeper and follow the links to learn more about the "how & why" and not just the "because they did it that way".

White space is something that is hard to nail. It depends on the context and the feel you are looking for.

I almost feel the pendulum is swinging too far back in the other direction though and some sites seem almost sparse for their attempts at incorporating too much white space. It works if you have something visual compelling to anchor the page (Apple) or your typography is applied as a graphic element. Having white space just to have white space is almost as bad as cluttering up a design with tight margins. There are extremes on either end.

Admittedly I almost didn't write this because I don't want to seem like the one person that is always down on the community. That certainly isn't the case, but Finch wanted to hear my thoughts so I posted them. If the white space piece came from a smaller site I probably would turn a blind eye, but when you have influence you also have some responsibility.

I agree, white space is a design element that is definitely tough to master. It's a dangerous tool that you must wield carefully or you can throw your whole design out for a loop.

Thanks for putting this together Scrivs. I don't think you are the one person always down on the community, but I understand not wanting to come off that way. Like you mentioned before on writing the SM article, people have been feeling this way for a long time.

My aim has been to drive people to dig further and learn more of the basics over just telling them what I think is trendy and to copy that for the next project. It's a fine line between what people will read and won't. If you come off too deep in the weeds on a subject people might think it's boring or not even click. So I have had a few pieces that I feel failed to go very deep in fear of not being read and turned out more sensationalized than I'd prefer.

The problem is if I write an article on applying all the Gestalt Principles in design and someone on one of those other blogs has "15 Free Awesome WordPress Themes", well guess who will be the ignored piece. It takes a lot of time to write a well researched article, or even a good opinion/editorial piece. It's a huge investment of time away from real life things that don't involve sitting in front of a glowing screen. I think a lot of the people doing the great work out there that have experience and something to offer the community just don't see a value in doing all that if everyone will be ignoring it for the misinformed lazily researched posts.

I am not sure what the solution is, but I know I'd rather see one fantastic article every week or two then bad ones everyday. That doesn't make money though, so I don't think it will stop.

I'd say 80% of what I read about design online is closer to what WDL does. It's sad, really. Budding designers out there just need to keep their guard up, I guess. They should ask why and how, not just what. I'd say the solution is for us to collectively publish and outnumber the bad, but we're all busy solving problems for our clients.

As a budding designer myself, I find it discouraging to see so many 'design' blogs that look like nothing more than revenue streams. At least I'm able to recognize it when I see it. Hate to say it, but I guess that's what separates the good designers from the bad. There are so many great designers out there, like Finch, that put so much originality into their work.

Tabloids.

I couldn't agree more.

On Monday this week I had the exact situation with a guest authored article (The Case Against Vertical Navigation) on Smashing Magazine. And just like Francisco I felt compelled to write a post in response (In Defense of Vertical Navigation). Obviously SM's article will get more play and influence many, many, designers who will never see the rebuttal.

To SM's credit, they did tweet a link to my response. But the issue here is just as you say, traffic equates to money and bullshit articles somehow draw traffic.

I do applaud SM's obvious effort to improve things since the backlash a few weeks ago--it is noticeable and appreciated.

The internet gives everyone a voice, and if you can post something everyday, especially linkbait type content, you will end up with authority. The problem is that many people who end up in that situation are not necessarily professionals or fully comprehend some of the things they write about. Many times you'll see a list of '30 Fabulously Designed Websites' and see 25 bad designs with flashy graphics, no attention paid to business or user goals, no use of proper design principles, etc.

It's frustrating but I commend your persistence Scrivs, keep on keepin' on.

Unfortunately this isn't limited to the digital media, either

Oh, damnit. I wrote a huge post then only to break the site with an en-dash, sorry! I've lost the entire thing, so I may have another crack at it later.

I'm a student Communication and Multimedia Design and I really love webdesign. I love that there is still so much to learn like for instance whitespace, but because all of these blogs squirting out '25 Free Wordpress Templates That Will Rock Your World !' kind of posts, I'm afraid that in a few years Webdesign is nothing more than: Download -> Fill With Content -> Upload -> Get Fame.

Also, I don't think that something like whitespace is something you'll learn from an article on the web. I think that Finch' article is perfect as it makes you curious. This article is an introduction to whitespace and after reading it I wanted to know more.

This has really turned into quite the debate. The one thing I'd like to note is that sites like SM, WDL, etc have established themselves as resources for the design/technology based community. Hence the "40 Clean & Clear WP Themes" posts. They have never claimed to be the go to source for information on the principles of design. I think more credit should be given to the design community to be able to differentiate between what sources are used as tools and "eye candy" and those blogs/online mags with real substance.

@finch, thanks for going back to the basics

@malabar: My apologies my friend, I thought I had that fixed. I will go back to the drawing board I suppose so you don't lose anymore posts.

@Lea: Indeed if you are going to simply be resources then I don't think people would have a problem with that. The problem occurs when you start to post educational posts that are wrong or misleading. You would like to think the audience can think for themselves and will continue to do research on a topic (like white space or vertical navigation), but that certainly isn't the case.

I think we can start to give credit to the community as a whole when we start to see articles that misinform receive less tweets than the ones looking to help educate.

The quality of articles are getting pretty ridiculous. It's sad when I have 100+ RSS subscriptions of Design/Development/UX blogs and I read maybe 5-10 articles a day, but mark about 60+ articles as "read" without even reading them. I really don't care about the "TOP X Brushes".

It's sad to hear that Francisco is restraining from going in depth with articles because he is afraid the community won't grab a hold of that in favor of the "Top X List" article.

I agree with Francisco, I would much rather read 2-3 quality articles a week then sift through the BS. Maybe you guys could join forces and create one solid blog that doesn't care about making money, but cares about quality content. The push back has to start some where.

Well I'm trying to grow, but success rarely happens overnight, but the audience is getting bigger and bigger. In the next couple of weeks you will begin to see some huge developments that I feel will help push our community in the right direction.

@Kyle I am glad you posted that article on Vertical Nav. I was waiting for someone else to respond to that WDL article, but after the day passed all I saw were tweets praising it. I had to write a response knowing it would continue to spread around unchecked.

@Lea You're welcome ;)

@Adam I think that's an interesting idea. A new blog/resource where people can learn/contribute that has a focus to be reliable and not churn out posts like a factory. I just wouldn't want to end up adding to the content overload everyone already feels is present here.

Any other opinions on that idea?

I guess someone has to be the bad boy here and I will be that one for SM this time. Sure they have made an effort lately and there have been some cool entries. The Zurb people have published great content on SM and so have other 'third party writers'.

SM sadly has moved the good old fashioned bait strategies to Noupe.com. If you're subscribed to the Noupe feed you can see that many of the dumb lists are written by a 'user' called 'vitaly'. After SM focused on mainly bait, I found and liked Noupe as a site which published mainly 'smart lists'. No need to say that I unsubscribed very recently.

WDL is one of those sites filling up my custom-sized browser window (1010*650) with non-content so I really ignore them. And the content is mainly written to be popular, not to be informative.

Another excellent post @scrivs. Like other industry outlets I believe that any community whose publishers make revenues from it should hold them accountable for what they publish.

4 sad things to note. 1. This controversy will bring that article more traffic than we can imagine. 2. Stupid headlines, lists, incorrect statements & reposts are frankly the only articles which draw readers in. 3. The vast majority of readers refuse to open quality content. 4. Even major players WSJ & NYT are being forced in this direction. I have participated in open forums with editors from these and other small & large publishers who are horrified with the direction their readership is pushing them.

At FUEL we even opted to remove our ads and have stopped taking 90% of our ad revenues rather than give terrible ROI to our advertisers when we try and post quality content. Yet every well researched & well written post we publish, sees fewer & fewer hits. Drowned out by 'bad' and even harmful content.

Yet as @Finch intimates, it is the design community dictating the content.

@scrivs I sincerely hope that your posts not only impact we publishers (which admittedly they do) but speak to the community which sways our hand as to what we can publish.

It just takes a bit of effort from everyone that really cares. If you see an article that you feel misinforms leave a comment and then write an entry yourself that argues against it with valid reasoning.

Stop telling yourself you don't have time to write an article. Nobody says you have to write the article in one sitting. Write it in spurts and by all means don't even worry about the traffic it might receive. Small chance it will be as successful as an article on the larger sites, but if the goal is to help people out then even if you hit just one person it will be worth it for you.

Don't hesitate to spread the word about it yourself by letting me and others know about it. Post it in the Community News section, email me, Twitter me if you want. Change will not happen overnight, but I have already noticed small changes in these past two months and I can only hope things continue to turn for the better.

The main issue I think here is that when advertising is your sole base of revenue then you are going to find every way possible to maximize and at the end of the day that usually means taking the low road. I can start another topic on this, but if you don't tie yourself to advertising then you become more free to do what you want.

@scrivs, I think you hit the nail on the head with your last paragraph - "The main issue I think here is ... advertising" (to paraphrase :D)

When your blog/site/tweets become more about generating traffic than about providing useful, original, well thought-out content, you've already set the model for your content structure.

Like finch said - "It takes a lot of time to write a well researched article"

Why put the time and effort into an original well-researched post if it's not going to drive traffic? It has to be about more than that. It has to be about actually WANTING to share ideas and concepts. The only problem is there is SO much noise out there it's really hard to filter through it all. That's one thing that drew me into Drawar when I initially stumbled upon it. It was a new fresh voice which seemed to be taking a different direction.

@Adam Reese, I agree totally. I've got lots of sites in my RSS feed that have hundreds of unread articles. I'm not willing to sift through the noise to find a useful article. On the other hand there are a few gems in there that aren't on the "link-bait" business model and I ALWAYS click through to their site when I see a new article posted because I know it will be something fresh, interesting and original.

Ironically it's the same model that is causing the newspapers to disappear. When you rely overly on advertising you are relying on the fact that you can continue to bring users to your site. There are guaranteed ways to do that and that is what many of these sites are using. When you have all the sites giving each other link love to spread it around you have setup the perfect situation that allows you to continue to bring people to sites.

Whether it lasts or not only time will tell. Will be interesting to see if they plan on growing businesses out of the foundations they have built and if they try will they stand.

When it comes to general audience media (e.g., newspaper websites), it's not necessarily a zero sum game.

Having a big crowd of eyeballs is nice, but outside of the web, eyeballs aren't worth anything until you know something more about them. Regular readers are worth more to advertisers than drive-by readers. Likewise, if I'm GM, I'm really only interested in advertising to people with the means and intention of buying a car. Attracting teenagers from Digg is a waste of money.

If we can find ways to monitor these effects, we might be able to have our cake and eat it too.

Good point and that is why advertisers love the design oriented sites because the audience is so targeted. However, I'm not so sure that all of them are the professionals that they are looking for.