The death of a website - CourtneyR.dev's 2nd Brain

The death of a website 🔗 **Source:** [The death of a website](https://www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-death-of-a-website/) > [!note]+ Document Notes > tags: [web-performance, JavaScript, web-architecture] > author: Jono Alderson > source: jonoalderson.com > reference: [https://www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-death-of-a-website/] > date created: 2025-10-09 12:00 > > # 🏷️ Title: The death of a website >  ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - Include links cited in or relevant to the article. ## 📝 Summary - What happened. - A noir-style investigation recounts “another site down” where “a website that used to be fast, lean, full of life” is now dead. - Why it matters. - “Cause of death? Same as always. Blunt-force abstraction.” Systemic complexity, JS overuse, and managerial pressure rot the web. - Key stakeholders. - Engineers, designers, PMs, execs/investors, users, and the broader web ecosystem. - Risks and tradeoffs. - Optimizing metrics over experience; speed vs. features; iteration vs. maintainability; abstraction vs. clarity. - Bottom line. - “The crime isn’t that the web is dying. It’s that we’ve stopped treating it like something alive.” ## 📖 Main Content - Core arguments: - Modern sites die from “systemic neglect” and “chronic misuse of JavaScript,” not malice. - Framework-heavy stacks (“Weapon of choice: framework, heavy calibre. Probably React, maybe Vue.”) create fragile, bloated experiences. - Teams “optimise for the wrong things” (e.g., green charts for Core Web Vitals) while real usability decays. - Continuous patches mask deeper architectural debt: “the corpse will twitch again.” - Context and terms: - Core Web Vitals and LCP matter, but proxy metrics can be gamed and miss holistic UX. - Headless CMS, microservices, and hydration scripts add indirection and failure modes if unmanaged. - Uncertainties: - Not all frameworks cause bloat; discipline and constraints can yield excellent outcomes. - Organizational incentives vary; some teams ship performant, resilient stacks. ### 🗒️ Notes - “No pulse, no structure, no soul. Just a tangle of wrappers, scripts, and styles…” - “Cause of death? Same as always. Blunt-force abstraction.” - “Weapon of choice: framework, heavy calibre. Probably React, maybe Vue.” - “Clean charts, broken sites. Numbers that make investors smile while users drown in latency.” - “You can fake a pulse for a while. You can’t fake a heartbeat.” - “Corporate homepages bloated on tracking scripts… storefronts drowning in dependencies… portfolios buckling under their own JavaScript.” - “Nobody writes websites anymore. They assemble them… to deliver experiences nobody asked for.” - “Contributing factors: build complexity, managerial optimism, chronic misuse of JavaScript.” - “We’ve normalised it… background noise in a city that forgot what silence sounds like.” - “The crime isn’t that the web is dying. It’s that we’ve stopped treating it like something alive.” ## 📚 References - Core Web Vitals overview (https://web.dev/vitals/) - Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) (https://web.dev/lcp/) - React official docs (https://react.dev/) - Vue official docs (https://vuejs.org/) - Hydration explained (https://www.patterns.dev/posts/hydration/) - Headless CMS concept (https://www.contentful.com/r/headless-cms/) - Microservices overview (https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html) - Chrome DevTools (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Paragraph A: - A detective-like expert examines a once-healthy website now crippled by excessive layers of code and tools, signaling systemic failure. - Paragraph B: - Despite good intentions and “best practices,” over-optimization and abstraction bury content and user needs under complexity. ## 📰 Newsletter - This week’s read: a gripping lament for sites that “used to be fast, lean, full of life” but now twitch under patches. Takeaway for WordPress pros: measure what matters beyond green Vitals. Audit third-party tags, cut JS, and prefer server-rendered, semantic HTML. Try Performance Lab, Query Monitor, and Lighthouse CI. Community picks: Core performance chats, theme.json tips, block patterns that don’t bloat, and hosting configs that hit TTFB budgets. Build less; ship clearer. ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Talks: “Blunt-force abstraction: diagnosing web rot” with live audits. - Demos: JS-free patterns, server-rendered templates, progressive enhancement. - Docs: perf budgets, examples-first patterns, CI checks. - Campaign: “Fix before you add” content series; attribution via UTMs. - Community: office hours for perf triage; incident review templates. #### OSPO - Governance: mandate perf budgets and decision records for new deps. - Compliance: license/dep scans; quarterly audits. - Security: third-party tag intake, embargo policy, signing. - SBOM: own components; freshness SLOs and deprecation paths. - Developer support: training on hydration costs; review hours. - Upstream: fund critical perf tooling; MoUs with key projects. - Strategy: OKRs tying UX metrics to revenue and retention. #### Community - Maintainers: roadmap clinics; release hygiene and rollback drills. - Contributors: first-issue perf bounties; pairing sessions. - Sponsors: milestone-linked budgets; transparent impact reports. - Ecosystem: cross-project outage drills; disclosure playbooks. #### WordPress - Core: triage slow paths; enforce performance budgets. - Core Performance: profiling plan; dashboards; perf bounties. - Core AI: guardrails; eval sets; no regressions to UX. - Core Program Team: rituals; cross-team dependencies; retros. - Mobile: telemetry review; offline UX priorities. - Playground: repro labs; education modules on perf smells. - Community: meetup kits on “less JS, more HTML.” - Training: lesson plans on CWV, server rendering, PEF. - Marketing: narrative—value of boring tech; case studies. - Support: KB gaps on third-party tags; escalation paths. - Design: UX audits; reduce motion; design tokens. - Documentation: examples-first patterns; style guide. - Photos/TV: submission and caption standards. - Polyglots: locale perf checks; glossary alignment. - Accessibility: WCAG reviews; heatmap of issues. - Meta: API reliability; contributor tools perf. - CLI: plugin scaffolds with perf defaults. - Hosting: cross-host perf checklists and telemetry. - Tide: scoring transparency; false-positive loops. - Openverse: ingestion performance; moderation policy. - Themes: linting; mentoring; test matrices. - Plugins: security liaisons; provenance checks. #### The WPCC - Programs: fellowships and maintainer stipends for perf initiatives. - Projects: governance clinics; documentation sprints. - Funding: matched grants; milestone payouts; open ledgers. ### FAIR - Independence: local metadata, provenance, signature checks. - Policies: funding transparency; sunset clauses; anti-capture. - Governance artifacts: reusable charters and scorecards. ## 🧪 Hypotheses - Teams optimizing solely for CWV risk worse real-user satisfaction and retention. - Reducing client-side JS by 30–50% improves task success and conversion. - Strict third-party tag governance lowers failure rates and improves TTI. - Server-rendered, semantic-first architectures outperform SPA baselines on resilience. ## 📊 Methodology - A/B test JS reduction and measure RUM (LCP, INP, CLS) plus task success. - Observational study correlating tag counts to error rates and bounce. - Case-control of SSR vs. SPA builds on identical content; measure uptime, UX, and SEO. ### ❓ Questions - Which incentives cause “clean charts, broken sites”? - What minimal abstraction yields maximal maintainability? - How to institutionalize perf budgets without stifling delivery? ### 🔮 Future Research - Longitudinal analyses of dependency growth vs. site health. - Economic modeling tying UX regressions to revenue decay. - Tooling that flags “blunt-force abstraction” anti-patterns in CI. ### 💡 Implications - Practice: prefer progressive enhancement; cut third-party scripts. - Policy: require architecture decision records and perf SLOs. - Security: vet tags and supply chains. - Education: curricula on measuring what matters. - Funding: support maintenance over feature churn. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - Reading level: ~Grade 9–10 (Flesch-Kincaid ≈ 9.5). #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: vivid metaphors. - Improve: before/after waterfalls, dependency graphs. #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: narrative cadence. - Improve: 3-minute audio summary. #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: strong analogies. - Improve: glossary of perf terms. #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: actionable vibe. - Improve: step-by-step audit checklist. #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: cause/effect chain. - Improve: decision trees and KPIs. #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: team roles implied. - Improve: group drills and peer reviews. #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: reflective tone. - Improve: self-audit worksheet. #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: decay/rot analogy. - Improve: lifecycle and sustainability models. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: none stated. - Improve: semantic HTML, alt text, landmarks. #### Keyboard navigation - Present: not covered. - Improve: visible focus, logical order. #### Contrast and readability - Present: not specified. - Improve: 4.5:1, line-height 1.5+, avoid tiny text. #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: not specified. - Improve: 200% zoom without clipping; reduce motion. #### Media and captions - Present: N/A. - Improve: transcripts, no autoplay. #### Forms and interactions - Present: N/A. - Improve: labels, inline validation, target size. #### Standards reference - Map to WCAG 2.2 AA for gaps. ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: general web culture. - Improve: global examples; multilingual access. #### Inclusive language - Present: accessible metaphors. - Improve: plain-language callouts, avoid jargon. #### Neurodiversity support - Present: strong structure via motif. - Improve: chunking, icons+text, predictable patterns. #### Representation - Present: roles implied, not diverse. - Improve: balanced examples and imagery. #### Psychological safety - Present: critical but not abusive. - Improve: community guidelines and moderated Q&A. ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - Causal: complexity → fragility (“a thousand dependencies… arguing”); clear mechanism. - Inductive: repeated cases suggest a systemic pattern. #### Fallacies - Possible hasty generalization: “Pick a site. Any site.” Mitigate with data bounds. #### Tone of voice - Noir, sardonic, urgent: “a morgue with good Wi‑Fi.” ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - Deny: none; acknowledges systemic neglect over malice. - Attack: mild critique of roles (“managerial optimism”), not ad hominem. - Reverse victim/offender: none; users are framed as victims of decisions. ## 🎯 Conclusion - Bottom line: Modern sites often die from avoidable complexity and neglected fundamentals. Treat the web as a living system; prioritize semantic HTML, server-side rendering, fewer dependencies, and real-user outcomes over vanity metrics. - Next steps: run a dependency and third‑party audit; set perf budgets; enforce CI checks; trim JS; measure with RUM tied to user tasks. ## 🧱 Refactor Appendix (append after 🎯 Conclusion) ### 📚 Literature Split Pad - Purpose: Stage Konik CEE units that become per-source Literature notes. - Split level: H3. - Include verbatim quotes under 25 words and a [view highlight] link. ### [H1] Blunt-force abstraction kills websites > [!quote] The death of a website(https://www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-death-of-a-website/) by [[Jono Alderson]] via [[jonoalderson.com]]. Published 2025-10-08. Accessed 2025-10-09. > “Cause of death? Same as always. Blunt-force abstraction.” Technical debt and indirection overwhelm content and UX. [view highlight](https://www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-death-of-a-website/#H1) #xref #articleseed ID:rw_[MISSING] ### [H2] Metrics can hide broken experiences > [!quote] The death of a website(https://www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-death-of-a-website/) > “Clean charts, broken sites.” Optimize for user tasks, not vanity scores. [view highlight](https://www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-death-of-a-website/#H2) #xref ID:rw_[MISSING] --- ### 🔖 Atomic Split Pad (Zettel Candidates) - Purpose: Promote reusable claims into Atomic notes. - Split level: H4. - Each item: one idea, present tense, specific, testable. #### [Z1] Third-party tags degrade reliability - Failures rise as tag count and weight increase. - Links: [[Web-Performance]] [[Governance]] #### [Z2] Progressive enhancement increases resilience - Core content and tasks work without JS. - Links: [[Resilience]] [[Accessibility]] --- ### ✏️ Fleeting Queue (Extract by Selection) - Purpose: Capture quick actions or sparks for Fleeting notes. - Extraction: Select one line → “Refactor: Extract selection to new note (content only --- --- tags: [web-performance, JavaScript, web-architecture] author: Jono Alderson source: jonoalderson.com reference: [https://www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-death-of-a-website/] date created: 2025-10-09 12:00 --- # 🏷️ Title: The death of a website ## 🧭 Table of Contents - [📝 Summary](#-summary) - [📖 Main Content](#-main-content) - [🗒️ Notes](#️-notes) - [📚 References](#-references) - [🗣️ Paraphrase](#️-paraphrase) - [📰 Newsletter](#-newsletter) - [✅ Action Items](#-action-items) - [🧪 Hypotheses](#-hypotheses) - [📊 Methodology](#-methodology) - [❓ Questions](#-questions) - [🔮 Future Research](#-future-research) - [💡 Implications](#-implications) - [🧠 Learning Styles Assessment](#-learning-styles-assessment) - [📊 Accessibility Assessment](#-accessibility-assessment) - [🌍 DEIB Assessment](#-deib-assessment) - [✅ Logical Validity](#-logical-validity) - [🛡️ DARVO Analysis](#-darvo-analysis) - [🎯 Conclusion](#-conclusion) ### 🔗 References - Include links cited in or relevant to the article. ## 📝 Summary - What happened. - A noir-style investigation recounts “another site down” where “a website that used to be fast, lean, full of life” is now dead. - Why it matters. - “Cause of death? Same as always. Blunt-force abstraction.” Systemic complexity, JS overuse, and managerial pressure rot the web. - Key stakeholders. - Engineers, designers, PMs, execs/investors, users, and the broader web ecosystem. - Risks and tradeoffs. - Optimizing metrics over experience; speed vs. features; iteration vs. maintainability; abstraction vs. clarity. - Bottom line. - “The crime isn’t that the web is dying. It’s that we’ve stopped treating it like something alive.” ## 📖 Main Content - Core arguments: - Modern sites die from “systemic neglect” and “chronic misuse of JavaScript,” not malice. - Framework-heavy stacks (“Weapon of choice: framework, heavy calibre. Probably React, maybe Vue.”) create fragile, bloated experiences. - Teams “optimise for the wrong things” (e.g., green charts for Core Web Vitals) while real usability decays. - Continuous patches mask deeper architectural debt: “the corpse will twitch again.” - Context and terms: - Core Web Vitals and LCP matter, but proxy metrics can be gamed and miss holistic UX. - Headless CMS, microservices, and hydration scripts add indirection and failure modes if unmanaged. - Uncertainties: - Not all frameworks cause bloat; discipline and constraints can yield excellent outcomes. - Organizational incentives vary; some teams ship performant, resilient stacks. ### 🗒️ Notes - “No pulse, no structure, no soul. Just a tangle of wrappers, scripts, and styles…” - “Cause of death? Same as always. Blunt-force abstraction.” - “Weapon of choice: framework, heavy calibre. Probably React, maybe Vue.” - “Clean charts, broken sites. Numbers that make investors smile while users drown in latency.” - “You can fake a pulse for a while. You can’t fake a heartbeat.” - “Corporate homepages bloated on tracking scripts… storefronts drowning in dependencies… portfolios buckling under their own JavaScript.” - “Nobody writes websites anymore. They assemble them… to deliver experiences nobody asked for.” - “Contributing factors: build complexity, managerial optimism, chronic misuse of JavaScript.” - “We’ve normalised it… background noise in a city that forgot what silence sounds like.” - “The crime isn’t that the web is dying. It’s that we’ve stopped treating it like something alive.” ## 📚 References - Core Web Vitals overview (https://web.dev/vitals/) - Largest Contentful Paint (LCP) (https://web.dev/lcp/) - React official docs (https://react.dev/) - Vue official docs (https://vuejs.org/) - Hydration explained (https://www.patterns.dev/posts/hydration/) - Headless CMS concept (https://www.contentful.com/r/headless-cms/) - Microservices overview (https://martinfowler.com/articles/microservices.html) - Chrome DevTools (https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/) ## 🗣️ Paraphrase - Paragraph A: - A detective-like expert examines a once-healthy website now crippled by excessive layers of code and tools, signaling systemic failure. - Paragraph B: - Despite good intentions and “best practices,” over-optimization and abstraction bury content and user needs under complexity. ## 📰 Newsletter - This week’s read: a gripping lament for sites that “used to be fast, lean, full of life” but now twitch under patches. Takeaway for WordPress pros: measure what matters beyond green Vitals. Audit third-party tags, cut JS, and prefer server-rendered, semantic HTML. Try Performance Lab, Query Monitor, and Lighthouse CI. Community picks: Core performance chats, theme.json tips, block patterns that don’t bloat, and hosting configs that hit TTFB budgets. Build less; ship clearer. ## ✅ Action Items #### DevRel - Talks: “Blunt-force abstraction: diagnosing web rot” with live audits. - Demos: JS-free patterns, server-rendered templates, progressive enhancement. - Docs: perf budgets, examples-first patterns, CI checks. - Campaign: “Fix before you add” content series; attribution via UTMs. - Community: office hours for perf triage; incident review templates. #### OSPO - Governance: mandate perf budgets and decision records for new deps. - Compliance: license/dep scans; quarterly audits. - Security: third-party tag intake, embargo policy, signing. - SBOM: own components; freshness SLOs and deprecation paths. - Developer support: training on hydration costs; review hours. - Upstream: fund critical perf tooling; MoUs with key projects. - Strategy: OKRs tying UX metrics to revenue and retention. #### Community - Maintainers: roadmap clinics; release hygiene and rollback drills. - Contributors: first-issue perf bounties; pairing sessions. - Sponsors: milestone-linked budgets; transparent impact reports. - Ecosystem: cross-project outage drills; disclosure playbooks. #### WordPress - Core: triage slow paths; enforce performance budgets. - Core Performance: profiling plan; dashboards; perf bounties. - Core AI: guardrails; eval sets; no regressions to UX. - Core Program Team: rituals; cross-team dependencies; retros. - Mobile: telemetry review; offline UX priorities. - Playground: repro labs; education modules on perf smells. - Community: meetup kits on “less JS, more HTML.” - Training: lesson plans on CWV, server rendering, PEF. - Marketing: narrative—value of boring tech; case studies. - Support: KB gaps on third-party tags; escalation paths. - Design: UX audits; reduce motion; design tokens. - Documentation: examples-first patterns; style guide. - Photos/TV: submission and caption standards. - Polyglots: locale perf checks; glossary alignment. - Accessibility: WCAG reviews; heatmap of issues. - Meta: API reliability; contributor tools perf. - CLI: plugin scaffolds with perf defaults. - Hosting: cross-host perf checklists and telemetry. - Tide: scoring transparency; false-positive loops. - Openverse: ingestion performance; moderation policy. - Themes: linting; mentoring; test matrices. - Plugins: security liaisons; provenance checks. #### The WPCC - Programs: fellowships and maintainer stipends for perf initiatives. - Projects: governance clinics; documentation sprints. - Funding: matched grants; milestone payouts; open ledgers. ### FAIR - Independence: local metadata, provenance, signature checks. - Policies: funding transparency; sunset clauses; anti-capture. - Governance artifacts: reusable charters and scorecards. ## 🧪 Hypotheses - Teams optimizing solely for CWV risk worse real-user satisfaction and retention. - Reducing client-side JS by 30–50% improves task success and conversion. - Strict third-party tag governance lowers failure rates and improves TTI. - Server-rendered, semantic-first architectures outperform SPA baselines on resilience. ## 📊 Methodology - A/B test JS reduction and measure RUM (LCP, INP, CLS) plus task success. - Observational study correlating tag counts to error rates and bounce. - Case-control of SSR vs. SPA builds on identical content; measure uptime, UX, and SEO. ### ❓ Questions - Which incentives cause “clean charts, broken sites”? - What minimal abstraction yields maximal maintainability? - How to institutionalize perf budgets without stifling delivery? ### 🔮 Future Research - Longitudinal analyses of dependency growth vs. site health. - Economic modeling tying UX regressions to revenue decay. - Tooling that flags “blunt-force abstraction” anti-patterns in CI. ### 💡 Implications - Practice: prefer progressive enhancement; cut third-party scripts. - Policy: require architecture decision records and perf SLOs. - Security: vet tags and supply chains. - Education: curricula on measuring what matters. - Funding: support maintenance over feature churn. ### 🧠 Learning Styles Assessment - Reading level: ~Grade 9–10 (Flesch-Kincaid ≈ 9.5). #### 👀 Visual learners - Present: vivid metaphors. - Improve: before/after waterfalls, dependency graphs. #### 🔊 Aural learners - Present: narrative cadence. - Improve: 3-minute audio summary. #### 🗣️ Verbal learners - Present: strong analogies. - Improve: glossary of perf terms. #### 🧩 Kinesthetic learners - Present: actionable vibe. - Improve: step-by-step audit checklist. #### 🧠 Logical learners - Present: cause/effect chain. - Improve: decision trees and KPIs. #### 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Social learners - Present: team roles implied. - Improve: group drills and peer reviews. #### 🧘‍♀️ Solitary learners - Present: reflective tone. - Improve: self-audit worksheet. #### 🌿 Naturalistic learners - Present: decay/rot analogy. - Improve: lifecycle and sustainability models. ### 📊 Accessibility Assessment #### Screen reader semantics - Present: none stated. - Improve: semantic HTML, alt text, landmarks. #### Keyboard navigation - Present: not covered. - Improve: visible focus, logical order. #### Contrast and readability - Present: not specified. - Improve: 4.5:1, line-height 1.5+, avoid tiny text. #### Text resizing and reflow - Present: not specified. - Improve: 200% zoom without clipping; reduce motion. #### Media and captions - Present: N/A. - Improve: transcripts, no autoplay. #### Forms and interactions - Present: N/A. - Improve: labels, inline validation, target size. #### Standards reference - Map to WCAG 2.2 AA for gaps. ### 🌍 DEIB Assessment #### Cultural breadth - Present: general web culture. - Improve: global examples; multilingual access. #### Inclusive language - Present: accessible metaphors. - Improve: plain-language callouts, avoid jargon. #### Neurodiversity support - Present: strong structure via motif. - Improve: chunking, icons+text, predictable patterns. #### Representation - Present: roles implied, not diverse. - Improve: balanced examples and imagery. #### Psychological safety - Present: critical but not abusive. - Improve: community guidelines and moderated Q&A. ### ✅ Logical Validity #### Strong reasoning - Causal: complexity → fragility (“a thousand dependencies… arguing”); clear mechanism. - Inductive: repeated cases suggest a systemic pattern. #### Fallacies - Possible hasty generalization: “Pick a site. Any site.” Mitigate with data bounds. #### Tone of voice - Noir, sardonic, urgent: “a morgue with good Wi‑Fi.” ### 🛡️ DARVO Analysis - Deny: none; acknowledges systemic neglect over malice. - Attack: mild critique of roles (“managerial optimism”), not ad hominem. - Reverse victim/offender: none; users are framed as victims of decisions. ## 🎯 Conclusion - Bottom line: Modern sites often die from avoidable complexity and neglected fundamentals. Treat the web as a living system; prioritize semantic HTML, server-side rendering, fewer dependencies, and real-user outcomes over vanity metrics. - Next steps: run a dependency and third‑party audit; set perf budgets; enforce CI checks; trim JS; measure with RUM tied to user tasks. ## 🧱 Refactor Appendix (append after 🎯 Conclusion) ### 📚 Literature Split Pad - Purpose: Stage Konik CEE units that become per-source Literature notes. - Split level: H3. - Include verbatim quotes under 25 words and a [view highlight] link. ### [H1] Blunt-force abstraction kills websites > [!quote] The death of a website(https://www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-death-of-a-website/) by [[Jono Alderson]] via [[jonoalderson.com]]. Published 2025-10-08. Accessed 2025-10-09. > “Cause of death? Same as always. Blunt-force abstraction.” Technical debt and indirection overwhelm content and UX. [view highlight](https://www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-death-of-a-website/#H1) #xref #articleseed ID:rw_[MISSING] ### [H2] Metrics can hide broken experiences > [!quote] The death of a website(https://www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-death-of-a-website/) > “Clean charts, broken sites.” Optimize for user tasks, not vanity scores. [view highlight](https://www.jonoalderson.com/misc/the-death-of-a-website/#H2) #xref ID:rw_[MISSING] --- ### 🔖 Atomic Split Pad (Zettel Candidates) - Purpose: Promote reusable claims into Atomic notes. - Split level: H4. - Each item: one idea, present tense, specific, testable. #### [Z1] Third-party tags degrade reliability - Failures rise as tag count and weight increase. - Links: [[Web-Performance]] [[Governance]] #### [Z2] Progressive enhancement increases resilience - Core content and tasks work without JS. - Links: [[Resilience]] [[Accessibility]] --- ### ✏️ Fleeting Queue (Extract by Selection) - Purpose: Capture quick actions or sparks for Fleeting notes. - Extraction: Select one line → “Refactor: Extract selection to new note (content only