META: Why It's Hard to Critique Personal Sites (was: Request for group)

At 03:03 p.m. 01/05/99 -0600, Virginia Blalock wrote:
>I would like to make a respectful request to the group. I know that there
>are many(well apparently most) of you who will not critique personal sites.
>I wish that would change. 

I agree with you that it would be good if more members would critique
personal sites.  However, there are often some problems associated with
doing so -- things which make it harder to critique a personal site
than a business or informational site.

* They're more personal.  This is obvious, but it means that what you're
  seeing isn't just "your work"; in some way, it's "you" as well.  A
  comment about "you" can sting more than a comment about "your work."
  Most people don't like risking these kinds of comments.

* There is a lower standard for personal pages.  In general, less is
  expected from a personal page in terms of quality, than from one that
  is for a business, or perhaps purely an informational page.  You can
  "get away with" things on a personal page that you should never do
  on a more professional site.

* Personal pages have a much less clear focus.  It's harder to identify
  the target audience and intended goals of a personal page; a business
  or information page has clearer aims that can be measured.

* A personal page seems "less important."  This basically says something
  along the lines of "why should I waste my time on something like
  this, when I can review something more important?"  Yes, it would
  be nice if this would change, but I can understand where some people
  are coming from.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't review personal pages -- if someone
puts one up for critique, we should help them out however we are
able.  But we should also keep in mind that when we ask someone to 
review our personal page, we're asking for something that's a little
harder than the typical critique.


--
Kynn Bartlett  <kynn(at)idyllmtn.com>                   http://www.kynn.com/
Chief Technologist, Idyll Mountain Internet      http://www.idyllmtn.com/
Design an accessible web site:                http://www.kynn.com/+fedweb
Tell your friend a celebrity wrote to you:      http://www.kynn.com/+imdb
Enroll now for my online CSS course!             http://www.kynn.com/+css

HTML: hwg-critique mailing list archives, maintained by Webmaster @ IWA