My list is complete. If a site passes my check list then it’s a quality site, regardless of whether it passes validation or not (though it probably does).

“Written content” and “Scripts used” - for me - are both subjective and objective. The objective aspects remain within your Technical guidelines; subjective aspects are not technical but affect my perception of the qualitative state of a site.

Written content.

Objective example: How do they present apostophes, ampersands, single quotes and double quotes in editorial content. Subjective examples: Does the site have a current copyright date. Are there typographical errors.

Scripts used.

Objective example: Dreamweaver-generated scripts. Subjective example: What purpose does the obstrusive display of script behaviors serve, e.g., Web 2.0 Ajax on everything imaginable.

After applying your guidelines, I - Readily - admit that my site is mediocre but then I doubt it will ever be Semantically correct. I prefer “plynth” over “footer”.

@Jarvklo: Only a comment on the parantesis? If that was a flamebait, yours was too.

Ok, I will have to look at the comment mechanism, I’m using the wordpress default though…

(Btw, your feed is not validating either ;)

Emil - I don’t advocate “best practices” for feeds. I use Feedburner and delegate that to them so I just won’t take you up on that obvious flame-bait ;)

As for the comment editing mechanism…
Your site somehow managed to mangle the closing blockquote, and then refused to accept several attempts to rectify the situation. You’ve got my email-address if you’re interested about further details.

I prefer web sites without grammar mistakes (In my opinion they are trustworthy) like books (most of them with correct quotes and dashes, especially which were make up without computers).

Yes, it’s difficult to use special characters, because there are no such symbols on keyboard. So I use mnemonic abbreviations for them mdash; « and » (last pair are for russian texts).

In English, AFAIK, better to use “ and ” for quotes and — for dashes (dash it is not hyphen or minus!).

Also about quotes you can read in last ALA article QTAG: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/qtag

The CSS only validates if you add profile=css21 to the url. It’s a part of the clearfix method of clearing floats. That’s very different from saying that the site doesn’t validate. It does.

About my wrappers. Each and every element on the page is needed, ther’s little gradients, tricks to make faux columns work, source ordering, and so on. So belive me when I say that every wrapper is needed. About the naming: since they are needed to do design things, they have no semantic value, and no semantic value means there is not good way to name them. Currently I belive the current compromise is what works best.

So, from my own point of view I do follow the highly set standards I advocate.

The comment function is not broken, it’s just my caching mechanism that does not update the page until after one hour. Or do you mean some other error? Please be specific.

(Btw, your feed is not validating either ;)

You advocate semantic coding, yet this site is built using code like

<div class=”h1″><a href=”http://friendlybit.com/”><span>Friendly Bit</span></a></div>

… which isnt’t very rich in semantics for a site header.

Your CSS doesn’t currently validate… yet you make a point twice that validation is important.

You advocate that only “mediocre sites” use classnames like “wrapper” - yet your site uses no less than three wrappers named wrapper1, wrapper2 and wrapper3… and I fail to see how the code of this site could be considered mediocre.

My point is - still - to point out that the impression that comes across since the guidelines you advocate in the article (seemingly) are not important enough for you to make your own site live up to your own standards might be contradicting what you’re trying to accomplish with the article in the first place… ;)

@Sean Fraser: Heh, nice name :) Could you describe your two tests a bit more?

@jarvklo: Could you expand on what problems this site has? I know the markup and CSS is much better than most sites out there but you seem to not agree. I’d love to hear some constructive criticism on this. You can find my e-mail on the contact page…

… and the code of this site is littered with practices contradicting what is described in the article.

IMHO setting a good example by actually practicing what is preached is one of the most important issues for any standards / best practices advocate sites out there.

I mean - If us standardistas don’t bother making our own site living up to the standards and practices we preach - why should anyone bother to listen to what we are saying anyway?