There’s been confusion about why I reacted so strongly to Zeldman’s posting, earlier in the day. Copied from an email I just to a friend:
Zeldman sees only wrong within the Internet. The industry is stupid. Content created without web writers is bad. He seems incapable of seeing the wonder that surrounds him, and that touches him in his everyday interaction.
Case in point – metadata has nothing to do with websites being visited or not. Not really. It’s all about how to generate buzz. We know this from weblogging; it’s all a game. None of us uses meta-data to connect via weblogging. In fact, we’re seeing the beginning instances of a truly semantic web through the human element contained in weblogging — and all Zeldman “sees” is that too many sites aren’t accessible.
I agree with him that web writers aren’t valued as highly as they should; I disagree with the assumption that only web writers can create good content.
It’s elitism and I’ve been fighting this on the internet since day 1. Zeldman is an elitist. If he’s talking about hiring firms, I’m not seeing this from his post. Perhaps the viewpoint is based on our different perspectives of Zeldman.