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The Website Specification

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Re: The Website Specification

#41

Post by wenderen »

selfhoster1312 wrote: post #12

This looks like slop from a slop factory. "SEO", "Agent-readiness". That's precisely what a good website doesn't do (to paraphrase the homepage). Oh yes, it's produced by a Wordpress "SEO" expert and private investor using Claude LLM. What a surprise. A man who built a fortune destroying the internet we loved with advertisement slop now working on destroying whatever's left with LLM slop.

From the about page (https://specification.website/about/):

> Not a framework. Not a guide. A spec — what is required, what is recommended, and what to avoid.

It's hard to tell how much of the site is LLM slop, but some of the copy sure is.

Re: The Website Specification

#42

Post by fmajid »

_ache_ wrote: post #36

https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fspecification... I don't get the goal of the website. It's averted as a specification, but to spec what ?! Everything is sourced to another "source of truth".

It's a compilation of best practices, and valuable as a one-stop-shop and checklist.

Re: The Website Specification

#43

Post by Gigachad »

Retr0id wrote: post #35
0-_-0 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agents don't buy stuff they see in an ad

So why serve them at all?

If your website itself is advertising a product or service you sell you would still want LLMs to see and fetch it. If you are a news site, blog, or any other website that doesn’t exist to sell something, you are only harmed by ai agents.

Re: The Website Specification

#44

Post by fmajid »

I'd love best practices around, say, login forms, e.g.:

- use standard input field names password managers recognize - disable autocompletion and autocapitalization on the login field

- if it's an email, use the correct HTML5 input type

- don't have a form with just a login email and force the user to click to enter the password

- follow NIST SP 800-53, e.g. no SMS 2FA and no arbitrary password rotation and composition rules

Or how many sites that have a form with only one input don't automatically focus on it.

Re: The Website Specification

#45

Post by mschuster91 »

wenderen wrote: post #41
selfhoster1312 wrote: post #12

This looks like slop from a slop factory. "SEO", "Agent-readiness". That's precisely what a good website doesn't do (to paraphrase the homepage). Oh yes, it's produced by a Wordpress "SEO" expert and private investor using Claude LLM. What a surprise. A man who built a fortune destroying the internet we loved with advertisement slop now working on destroying whatever's left with LLM slop.

From the about page ( https://specification.website/about/ ): > Not a framework. Not a guide. A spec — what is required, what is recommended, and what to avoid. It's hard to tell how much of the site is LLM slop, but some of the copy sure is.

> It's hard to tell how much of the site is LLM slop, but some of the copy sure is.

Can't speak for the AI readiness stuff, the general webdev stuff is solid. Copy is fluffed up of course but didn't find any glaring errors and omissions.

Re: The Website Specification

#46

Post by neya »

Latty wrote: post #11

"Agent Readiness" will likely age as well as "Web 4.0 Blockchain Integration" has. (To be entirely clear, not because agents won't be a relevant thing, although certainly I have my doubts, but because I believe even if they are a relevant thing, requiring special allowances from sites undermines the whole point, and such things will only end up used by bad actors to mismatch what agents see to what humans see, and so…

I swear to God. I just want to go back to the 2000s where everything was just plain HTML and some basic CSS, if at all any, by default you got responsive design out of the box, readable text and super user friendly GUI from the browser's own default stylesheet.

Today you open any website. Everything is a fucking component. A simple dropdown with a finite list? Has its own loader and makes 10 fetch requests for no reason. Not even exaggerating - look at Instagram and Facebook on web.

Fuck all these specifications, just give me the raw HTML that isn't obfuscated by your shitty/shiny new JS framework that you swear will change the game (looking at you, React)

Re: The Website Specification

#47

Post by Retr0id »

Gigachad wrote: post #43
Retr0id wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So why serve them at all?

If your website itself is advertising a product or service you sell you would still want LLMs to see and fetch it. If you are a news site, blog, or any other website that doesn’t exist to sell something, you are only harmed by ai agents.

In those situations you wouldn't have ads on the human version of the site either, surely?

Re: The Website Specification

#48

Post by woadwarrior01 »

knowmygpa wrote: post #32

This would be a really great resource website in 2016. But right now, when AI can just spit out everything you have on website faster and in a more personalized way then i dont think that people would wanna use this much. Just my perspective, dont wanna be rude

Don't want to be rude. If you don't want to read it, at least ask your AI to read it for you.

Re: The Website Specification

#49

Post by nvader »

fmajid wrote: post #42
_ache_ wrote: post #36

https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fspecification... I don't get the goal of the website. It's averted as a specification, but to spec what ?! Everything is sourced to another "source of truth".

It's a compilation of best practices, and valuable as a one-stop-shop and checklist.

That's debatable. Every best-practice arose to solve a real problem within a context, and is only "best" if that context applies.

If you apply best-practices without a regard for that context, you end up with a dull, cargo-culted checklist of must-haves to beat people over the head with, without deriving any true human value.

The compiler of this artifact is making a judgement call[0] of what best practices apply somewhat universally (to every "decent website"). I haven't yet been convinced of their standing or judgement to make that decision.

[0]: Charitably, I'm assuming they have, rather than, e.g. delegating the judgement to an opaque model's weights.

Re: The Website Specification

#50

Post by Matl »

neya wrote: post #46
Latty wrote: post #11

"Agent Readiness" will likely age as well as "Web 4.0 Blockchain Integration" has. (To be entirely clear, not because agents won't be a relevant thing, although certainly I have my doubts, but because I believe even if they are a relevant thing, requiring special allowances from sites undermines the whole point, and such things will only end up used by bad actors to mismatch what agents see to what humans see, and so…

I swear to God. I just want to go back to the 2000s where everything was just plain HTML and some basic CSS, if at all any, by default you got responsive design out of the box, readable text and super user friendly GUI from the browser's own default stylesheet. Today you open any website. Everything is a fucking component. A simple dropdown with a finite list? Has its own loader and makes 10 fetch requests for no rea…

I too want to go back to that, but I fear most consumers/potential visitors to your website have been conditioned to expect flashy web by this point and so it's a self reinforcing paradigm.
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