Subject: RE: Quality task force on web sites

From: "Barathy, RamaSubramaniam" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 5 Sep 2000 17:36:31 +0200

hi, 
It is like telling we dont need any ISO certification or CMM level in this
technology world in a very abstract sense. It would be definitely an global
effort, but would finally end up in better web and way of promoting good
quality!!!
Regards Rams

-----Original Message-----
From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]
Sent: Tuesday, September 05, 2000 4:29 PM
To: Barathy, RamaSubramaniam
Cc: [email-masked]
Subject: Re: Quality task force on web sites 

On Tue, 05 Sep 2000 11:31:56 +0200, "Barathy, RamaSubramaniam"
<[email-masked]>  said:
> Would it not be nice to have some sort of quality control task force that
> assigns a quality level for the web sites through out the world. 

We have enough problems just *finding* all the web sites in the world.
I believe I saw a statistic that NONE of the major search engines included
more than about 20% of the actual pages out there.  And you might want
to check out the sort of hardware the big engines have to use to actually
DO the indexing - this sort of thing usually doesn't happen for free, which
means that somebody will have to FUND this....

Also, notice that on *many* sites, all the *interesting* content is
active content - meaning that it's quite hard to index.  Two of the
pages I visit a *lot* are the IBM and SGI bug report databases, which
are only searchable via keyword.

> This would make the site developers to bring in the higher quality to the
> net.

Why would it motivate them?  There's several possibilities here:

1) They are technically unable to do better.  A quality control won't
help them.

2) They are happy with the page, and the page's users are happy. WHy do they
care what quality control says?

3) They're happy, and don't care about the users.  A QC rating won't
motivate them.

4) They're not happy with their work, but are too time-pressed to do
better.  A QC rating won't make more hours in the day.

> With more and more web sites, we r getting lost in finding quality
> information.

Yes, but quality control isn't the answer, unless you are advocating
shutting down web pages that don't meet your standards....

-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Operating Systems Analyst
				Virginia Tech

---

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 05 Sep 2000 11:54:36 -0400

> It is like telling we dont need any ISO certification or CMM level in this

Odd, I've never found an ISO9001-certified loaf of bread at my local grocery
store.

The majority of *consumers* have never heard of ISO9001, nor understand
why they should care (or IF they should care).

Companies cite ISO9001 in procurement requests.  People surf the web.

The distinction is important.