
Please ban sites which fail to function using vanilla HTML - dredmorbius
https://joindiaspora.com/posts/16973302
======
tomhoward
How is this different from somebody demanding that Microsoft refuse to allow
any app to run on Windows if it only works via a GUI and not also on the DOS
CLI?

The purpose of websites is to provide information and functionality to humans.
It's up to publishers and developers to decide how to deliver their work in a
way that is accessible to their chosen audience.

It's already a high bar for people to write content and build apps.

The higher you raise the bar, the less content and functionality will be
available to all of us.

Also, many people who write content are not developers, and will simply
publish their writing where it's easiest for them to do so.

Are they now required to audit all the publishing platforms available to them,
to see whether or not their content will be allowed on HackerNews? How are
they meant to learn how to do that?

And what about web-apps that are not just text content, but rich apps and
games that could never possibly work via text alone.

Are they now not allowed to be viewed by anyone via HN?

Overall, this idea is impractical but also reeks of a sense of entitlement.

We should show gratitude and encouragement to anyone who makes the effort to
produce content or functionality for us to read and use, not punish people for
failing to cater exactly to our narrow preferences.

------
satori99
I have found myself using Firefox's Reader View for nearly every article I
read these days. And if FF can't render a site or article in this way I
usually skip it.

It doesn't work on this article. The initial served HTML page contains no
content -- which is more than a little ironic.

~~~
wiggler00m
Does this exist in Brave or Chrome?

~~~
satori99
It does in Chrome, but it's a little hidden away;

[https://www.howtogeek.com/423643/how-to-use-google-
chromes-h...](https://www.howtogeek.com/423643/how-to-use-google-chromes-
hidden-reader-mode/)

------
smalley
As a person who is often in a network that enforces very aggressive active
content blocking I am very sympathetic to the idea of penalizing content that
does not work well without javascript. This said, I do not know how that
policy would be reliably implemented.

The linked post suggests banning all content on a domain/site after content
which does not render in basic html is submitted and continuing until that
site appeals the determination. I don't think that would be a good idea as 1)
it may hide content which non-HN users produce and would not otherwise know to
appeal and 2) penalize broader domains due to bad content produced by say a
single user posting to a multiuser site.

I also wonder what would count as not being usable in plain html. Sure there
are obvious examples like the article the post links to which display zero
content but what about all of the in-between spaces. As an example, what if a
site has textual content viewable as plain html but also very informative
figures/demonstrations that require javascript to make some of the points in
the piece. Would this content be removed if it was partially unviewable and
meaningful information is lost?

If folks do want to move forward with some kind of penalization of content
perhaps it would be better to agree to vote down this content as a community
practice or have a per submitted article flag that either ads a tag of shame
[requires JS] to the title or removes only that single article rather than
broader domain/site bans that are permanent until appealed.

Maybe it's worth trying to force the change, but if enough people are able to
view the content and like it enough to vote it up perhaps we should also just
leave it alone and just deal with the consequences of choosing not to run
javascript and let everybody just view potentially valuable content that they
can see.

~~~
dredmorbius
From the article:

 _My suggested implementation is to institute site bans based on reports /
awareness, and to leave those bans in effect until the problem can be verified
to be fixed. That is: the system needn’t be perfect, but it should exist, bans
should be instituted when requested, and sites themselves must take positive
action to see them lifted._

(Author)

The point is to make noncompliance painful.

If the main body content is feasibly viewable in a GUI _and_ a console
browser, that's sufficient.

In the case prompting this request, I was able to successfully view the
content _with the additional steps_ of locating the Markdown source, and re-
rendering that as HTML, via a pandoc pipeline:

    
    
        pandoc --standalone -f markdown -t html -o - \
        https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anderspitman/anderspitman.net/master/entries/16/entry.md |
        /usr/bin/w3m -T text/html
    

In 0.3s as it happens, for those concerend with efficiency measures.

I wouldn't consider the _process_ of that as sufficient, but the _result_
certainly was.

Collateral damage is unfortunate. Responsibility lies with the violator.

~~~
kohtatsu
Probably best to make it clear you are the author at some point.

------
dredmorbius
I'm aware Diaspora itself doesn't render without JS. It's what avails itself,
my apologies.

Post text:
[https://pastebin.com/raw/9K5h6c5V](https://pastebin.com/raw/9K5h6c5V)

I nominate joindiaspora.com as the first banned site.

------
parrot_coder
I see what you are going for and in an ideal world, I would love for there to
be some way to prevent those types of abuses. But the problem with this
proposition is that it would effectively ban every modern SPA and take us back
to web 1.0.

~~~
smacktoward
_> it would effectively ban every modern SPA and take us back to web 1.0_

You say that like it would be a bad thing!

~~~
ivanhoe
yeah, like there was anything wrong with having 6 levels of nested tables and
dozens of placeholder gifs all over the page...

~~~
tjoff
Even if that ever was the norm, which it wasn't, it still is better than what
we have today.

------
madrox
If this were to happen, product teams would simply create more server-side
fallbacks for their design patterns. All Javascript has done is make the web
require fewer full page redraws. We'd be back into the days of server-side
HTML rendering. I'm not sure that's a step forward. Stamping out a technology
just because it enables a behavior you don't like won't stop the behavior.
Meanwhile, you'll punish a lot of good actors.

Video on the web, specifically, has a storied history, which is the bigger
reason for what's going on with Smart TVs and how they relate to naked video
files. Javascript has nothing to do with it.

~~~
tjoff
What... server side html rendering is vastly superior.

Performance is better. Privacy is better. Battery life is much better.
Usability is much much better.

~~~
AstralStorm
Performance depends on how many refreshes are asked of your connection and
browser, but that mostly pertains to forms and login screens.

------
greenyoda
The purpose of HN is to share interesting information with others, not to
lobby for changes in the way web sites are implemented. I personally dislike
the gratuitous use of JavaScript, but I don't think I should deprive everyone
on HN of interesting articles because of my personal preferences.

------
PaulHoule
I think there are many other things worse. e.g. Medium, sites with pop-over
menus, cookie popups, etc.

~~~
weberc2
Headers that slide in and hide the content whenever you scroll to read the
content in the first place.

~~~
PaulHoule
I was mystified by some of the strange things I've seen on content sites in
the last few months but then I realized they were doing click fraud.

That is, strange things happen when you scroll, content moves around so that
when you click on a link you accidentally click on an ad "ka-ching!"

I started complaining to advertisers and anandtech stopped doing this.

------
abbadadda
> And yes, I'm aware of the irony that Joindiaspora.com does not function
> without JS. Please ban Joindiaspora.com as your first site ban instance.

LOL

------
tus88
Ironically this page says:

> This website requires JavaScript to function properly. If you disabled
> JavaScript, please enable it and refresh this page.

~~~
dredmorbius
Ironically, the post explicitly references that point, and calls for a ban of
Joindiaspora.com as the first HN site ban.

~~~
jessaustin
a) that isn't irony

b) couldn't you have found a better host for this?

------
Pako
Isn't submitting your own stuff usually subbed shunned upon on here? Or was
that Reddit?

------
Alex3917
SPA apps only add about 30 milliseconds to the time required to load content,
which is far faster than human perception. If folks really think they can tell
the difference, we should get James Randi to set up a challenge.

~~~
NullPrefix
>30 milliseconds

On what type of connection? Does my packet loss matter? How many idle cpus do
I need?

