Discussions in Web Design
Cleaning Up or Moderating/Managing a Group (View All Discussions in this Group)
The Web Design group grew quickly right from the start - a beautiful thing to behold. That said, I occasionally see bookmarks that don't fit the stated goal of the group (""). Some of these are on the edge, so I leave them (those that stray away from design, into the CSS realm for example), others are off base (a bookmark for a Web-based app that has nothing to do with design), which I remove.
My question to fellow members of the Web Design group, as well as to other group moderators and managers is this: where should the line be drawn? While I have no desire to be really strict and I like the fact that there is ,and should be a sizable gray area due to the nature of the topic; I want to keep the group focused and encourage other groups to spring up to cover new topics.
Should the Web Design group stick strictly to issues of Web *Design*, or is it okay to include links to related subjects like CSS technique and the like?
Thanks!
Alex
Hi Alex. I'm probably guilty of sending quasi-related bookmarks as most don't deal directly with web *design* but I figure they'll be appreciated or found useful by practitioners. To me the web design group covers more than the design aspect of it. I suspect others feel this way too. Design and development are two different things, but I know they are used interchangeably by many. When I send a bookmark to your group it deals with an aspect of web design with its broader meaning (development). In other words I send topics related to standards, accessibility, CSS, mark-up, best practices, even more obscurely-related info such as PHP. Anything a web designer/developer might be interested in. Again, my thinking is this is stuff a "web designer" will want to know.
If this isn't deemed allowable any longer and you want to close it up some, or it's not what the group wants, I understand, just let me know. I don't have much to offer in the design-only category, though, so it would be somewhat limiting. The size of this group sort of indicates it's a catch-all for anything somewhat related and would be a group with interests broader than design only.
Not my call, though. Just let me know.
There is a couple of ways you can handle this. You could allow for related technologies to web design such as CSS, developer languages etc, or simply make it a 'purist dream' and have it strictly web design. You have to remember though that designing for the web is going to heavily overlap into other areas such graphic design, coding, SEO etc.
As for my own thoughts on this, I am with having it strictly 'design' as it then makes it easier in searching for information pertaining to one subject rather than wading through other areas. But there again I am a categorized kind of person, anyway...
Thanks for the discussion Alex. I tend to agree with Vincent. Design should be the primary focus for what makes it into this group. I belong to several other CSS and/or coding related groups and the only reason I continue to use them is for their topic-relevant content. Although I am certainly guilty of putting up plenty of goofball links in the general category, I always try to maintain a discerning eye when it comes to adding links to seperate groups. I believe that enforcing a "design only" standard would definitely enhance the relevance of this group.
Ummm - Isn't CSS a web 'design' related topic by definition? Most - or rather, all of the sites that I've built rely on CSS for the graphical representation of pages - eg; their 'design/layout'.
Perhaps I'm missing something ...
.
The topic, "Web design", is interrelated and interdependent upon CSS and markup.
Web design without consideration of these two topics becomes theoretical.
You know what I mean? Think of the "designers" (who we have all seen) that are aces in Photoshop, but end building a web page with slices dumped into table cells.
I don't understand how a web design group cannot feature CSS bookmarks. The subject is at the very core of present day design and is essential in any web design discussion or topic. Accessibility and usability are also two elements that should be included in my opinion. I am not a standards nazi but standards plus proper understanding of interface design is at the very heart of web design and CSS is a big part of this.
Maybe I misunderstand what is termed as web design?
I'm all for CSS being part of the design group as it's an integral piece to a great design. Anything at all that assists with the design should be considered.
What kind of web based apps have been removed or are in question?
alex, you have a wonderful dilemma. mike is right, we use all sorts of tools to develop our sites. yet, we could be buried alive in links in here, which could water down the effectiveness of the group. like ryan, i belong to a separate css group because it specializes in something i want to follow. so if you want to exclude a specific subject, go for it. but all i ask is that you state such in the group description, and that the excluded group be available as a separate group beyond this. good luck.
Thanks for participating everyone, please keep the discussion going! I'm glad to see that this quandary isn't just in my head. ;) My example using CSS was probably poorly chosen, as I agree that CSS is a key tool in a Web Designer's belt. Instead, I should have used something along the lines of JavaScript or AJAX.
Like a lot of folks on this list, my work spans the realms of design and development, so I fully recognize that there is a large gray area in between which holds subjects like CSS and interaction design, which may in turn pull in other related subjects like standards, which may then pull in XHTML etc. I'm really interested in drawing a bead on whether or not there is a good cut-off point, where we can say "this is no longer design". There is a converse as well, relating to the print world, which provides some great design resources that are inspirational for those of us on the Web side.
I personally like having some gray area in our group, which is why I have posted several "quasi-related" links (good term Mike) and I don't remove links to sites about CSS and other content I feel is related. Like others who posted above, I belong to several topic-specific groups and value their specific content. As the Web Design group is larger than me, I think it only right to open the decision as to what we should be and my logic up to our community for feedback.
As far as what I have removed, (a grand total of five entries) are links to two different blogging apps, one movie and two bits of real estate spam. I sent messages to the original posters of the non-spam links explaining why I removed them and the two response that I have received were understanding and friendly. The ma.gnolia community rocks!
Thanks for responding to my message and joining this conversation, it is very helpful!
Alex
Who may have rambled on a bit there...
This is interesting as we just had a conversation today about the architect of our new site re-design. We are thinking of breaking our services out into 4 categories. Web Design, Web Development, Web Marketing, and Corporate ID Packages.
For content under the Web Design category we are thinking of promoting the likes of CSS, XHTML, Web Standards, User Interface Design, and Color Theory.
CMS, Ajax, programming languages, etc. would go under Web Dev.
I'd appreciate feedback on if you think we are correct in our category grouping. I can see those items being listed here as well.
Hi Tony, obviously I don't know anything about the strategy of your business, so please take my response with a large grain of salt. :)
I think I'd arrange things a bit differently for many of the reasons folks noted above in response to my question. I tend to think of the first three categories (Web Design, Web Development, Web Marketing) as a single group because they are so tightly integrated. Good Web Design relies heavily on solid Marketing principles and vice versa. If either is missing, the site isn't doing the job as it should. Tht site in turn should rest on a solid development foundation built specifically to meet the requirements of that one client or product. Ii shold be a whole package, start-to-finish.
[Enter the grain of salt] I do not know is who your target audience is, so this feedback may be useless if you are marketing to potential agency partners. The energy spent promoting CSS, XHTML and standards could be better spent marketing your expertise as a whole and the specific solutions you can provide. You are producing a great package using tools and processes that let you get a professional product out the door quickly without sacrificing future scalability etc. :)
I think a lot of us make the assumption that our clients are as jazzed about Web technologies and processes as we are. Instead of remembering that the client has specific business goals in mind, relying on our expertise to choose the right tools in order to achieve those goals. Those rare clients who want a specific technology will ask you if you can do it once they have decided that you care more about them than code.
Oh, and I would definitely keep Corporate Identity separate though as that is definitely a unique offering and should be marketed as such.
My $0.02,
Alex
Tony, we may want to start a new thread for your question to avoid mixing the two discussions up. If that's cool by you, please start the new thread and I'll post my reply there and pull both of our posts out of this one. :)
Alex
Sorry, I didn't mean to start a new thread. I was just trying to show I would like to see CSS, XHTML, and Web-Standards as topics in a Web Design group.
And our business does target other design firms as well as knowledgeable corporate clients. A lot of the stuff on those pages will be for search engines as well ;-)
Cool. :) Thanks for the update Tony.
In my humble opinion, if you are interested, is that: web design, marketing design, scientific design, layout design, architecture design ("I think I should hire a designer to boost my house", etc) and whatever design you might imagine has probably one final goal: Describing something.
So as in my understanding, design can be considered the presentation medium. This (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design ) article on wikipedia may have one or two hints about what I mean by "describing", "description" or "presentation".
In short, it is what you look in the end.
From this point I believe html, css are okay since they are presentation tools while php for instance shouldnt be since it is a processing tool (php output is still html). Having that in mind I have a trend to believe that for instance: flash, html, css, xslt, image processing, drawing techniques, and a lot more is related to web design. Hence, you can not build an website (it is web design, not just design) without html or other descriptive technology such as xml. If you just describe your website as a simple image (say: http://mysite.com/image.png) it would lack something that is proper of the web: anchors. The www is all about links. If you are downloading only images then you do not have an world wide web but an world wide gallery.
Accessibility and others are part of the art in it of course. In that article of wikipedia I mentioned they say about "Approaches to design". In this they mention a few like KISS (popular keep it simple stupid) and the User-centered design. I believe Accessibility could be under User-centered design since accessibility is a presentation need.
My two cents. But well, we can always be wrong. Thanks.
I read Alex mentioning something about design relying heavily on solid marketing principles, this makes me question whether or not I am in the right spot. I joined web design group to connect with a group of designers that could concentrate on design for any audience. I seldom work on commercial web design and my audience at work is aimed primarily at basic visual communication for education and online learning. Although basic design principles apply with any web design project, we can talk about designing for the different audience approaches and learn from each other in that way. Having said that, am I in the right group?
Hi Terry, you're in the right group. :) We should definitely discuss Web design in terms beyond the commercial and industry circles. My comments above applied were within the context of Tony's questions about categorization. I should have provided a bit more information in my reply to make that clear.
Oddly enough, my job bridges the worlds of online education and marketing, so I firmly believe that each subject area has a lot to teach the other. I look forward to seeing your contributions to the group!
Very good feedback bahamut. There are definitely several ways for us to classify the topic, and I am glad to see you jump into the discussion, as I think it is a constantly evolving one.
Hey Alex I feel your pain I run the ( http://ma.gnolia.com/groups/SocialMedia ) Social Media - Sharing your web group and I know the headaches of moderating all too well. How I sort of eased the problem was create a discussion thread labeled ( http://ma.gnolia.com/groups/SocialMedia/discussions/223 ) Establishing Ground Rules and as the title states I wrote down some quick ground rules of the group and then sent out a message to the members letting them know of it. Since then I have cut down the "irrelevant" bookmarks being posted.
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