Not wishing to completely alienate the last two posters here 🙂 (http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/04/14/experts-on-the-internet/ and http://www.whydontyou.org.uk/blog/2006/04/14/web-design-articles/) I still feel the need to defend .net slightly and possibly play devils advocate.
As a magazine, .net has no pretences of being a scientifically rigourous journal and there certainly isn’t any peer review process…, so it is a bit unfair to critise its articles in that light. The magazine is a “trade journal” and as such is supposed to be targetting its articles in that direction. The e-commerce competition was (IMHO) more a case of seeing what can be done to the standards and requirements of in-house judges – not a test of cold, hard, customer service. I am not saying they are right in doing this, but you would hope any website which was planning to introduce an e-commerce application would conduct extensive customer research, not simply rely on the opinions of three “ivory towers” types.
I agree with heather’s comments that the internet using public dont really care about what backend technology is in place – all they want is to achive thier goals (find information, buy things, play games etc) with the minimum of hassle. The fact a site is open or closed source is largely irrelevant. However, .net magazine is aimed at other Web Builders (webmasters, web designers etc., whatever you want to call them). This means the back-end matters. The update process matters. The ease of construction matters. The ease of update matters. And so on.
In my mind, this is what .net magazine was targetting and, to an extent it has achieved it’s goal. Now, the important question is “should it change its goals?” Personally, I think so. It is trying to be all things to everyone and as a result it is failing badly in some respects.
This months magazine has a section where it tears Tesco.com’s website / user experience apart. This is all done from the “fellow expert” point of view but it is couched in “customer-focus” terms. Now, I am not disagreeing with the comments .net has made (tesco’s website certainly could be improved) but the resounding fact of the matter is that despite its “failings” this is one of the biggest online grocery sites there is. That certainly means more than Gareth Knight’s judgement on its style and system.
I think there is a very real risk that dedicated net-geeks may get snared up in a circular self-fulfilment, where the opinions, judgements and criticisms move further and further away from the mainstream (and therfore “public” opinion). That is ok if your website provides a service to nothing but other geeks, but if you are selling to the public make sure you get their feedback!