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#10: Add dubious content to your articles that use examples specifically designed to provoke and linkbait users of Hackernews, 37Signals, Posterous, and Tumblr.


The sense of loyalty to/ownership of software you use is commendable in at least one respect. However, clearly it isn't without flaws, right? Work of human hands & etc. And clearly you're more interested in hearing about its flaws than the flaws of a site you've never seen or, worse, a strawman site created for the purpose of the article.

I mean, sure, they could have said "Imagine a social news site where the key value was in the comments and the comments were only accessible if you hit a target which was 62 pixels wide and 10 pixels tall".

People would say "Eh, like anyone would do that. That would be a clear error."

I bet I just sent a bunch of people to the homepage with a ruler, right? Good.

Now would you have rather heard about that issue, or not heard about that issue? Personally, I'm in favor of being a cautiously humble absolute dictator when doing web design. Absolute dictator because ultimately I have the only say that matters, cautiously humble because if the data says that my cart is costing me $30,000 I will follow the data. (I wish Smashing Magazine would give me free usability advice.)


But it's not a mistake. It's brilliant.




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