The problem almost certainly starts with the conception of what we're doing as "building websites".
When we do so, we
mindset of working on systems
If your systems work compromises the artifacts
then it's not good work
This is part of a broader phenomenon, which is that
when computers are involved with absolutely anything
people seem to lose their minds
good sensibilities just go out the window
low expectations from everyone
everyone is so used to excusing bad work
sui generis medium
violates the principle of least power
what we should be doing when grappling with the online publishing problem—which is what this is; that's all it is—is, instead of thinking in terms of working on systems, thinking about this stuff in such a way that we never lose sight of the basics; the thing that we aspire to do when we want to put together a website is to deal in
documents
and their issuing authority
That is, a piece of content
and its name
(the name is a qualified name that we recognize as valid only when the publisher has the relevant authority for that name, determined by its prefix; URLs)
that's it
that's all a Web site is
anything else is auxiliary
really not a lot different from what goes on when you publish a book
take a manuscript through final revisions for publication
and then get an ISBN issued for it
so the problem comes from the industry
people "building websites"
like politicians doing bad work
and then their constituents not holding them accountable
because that's not how politics works
you don't get held accountable for doing bad work
so the thing to do is to recognize that
if we're thinking about "websites" from any other position
things that technical people try to steer us in the direction of
like selecting a particular system and then propping it up
and how to interact with a given system to convince it to do the thing we want it to do—
then we're doing it wrong
we're creating content
and then giving it a name
