6 ms·

Death to w3schools! When search engines allowed blacklisting domain, w3schools was my first and only pick. It always seems to show up on top for many web tech q

by cies 5y ago

Death to w3schools! When search engines allowed blacklisting domain, w3schools was my first and only pick. It always seems to show up on top for many web tech questions, but the quality is rubbish. MDN is a breath of fresh air in this regard. I expect it will knock w3schools of it's search result throne in the coming years. The end of a era of low quality, ad sponsored (4 ads, just counted) web technology reference.

cies 5y ago
Because of this rant I had a look at the company behind w3shools. This is their about page: https://w3schools.sinsixx.com/about/about_refsnes.asp.htm https://w3schools.sinsixx.com/about/about_refsnes.asp.htm If you want to communicate "stuck in the 90s", take this as your example! The photo of the "Web Masters", the favicon, the W3C-badges, the gif-badge webhosting ad, fixed-width, the CMS400 ad, the bordered boxes around everything. I had a blast.
- Liquid_Fire 5y ago
  To be fair, that seems to be a copy of the page from more than 10 years ago (note the "Copyright 1999-2009" in the footer). The current website still seems to be run by the same company but looks much more modern.
  - cies 5y ago
    You are probably right. I just Google'd for "Refnes Data" (the name I found on the w3schools page) and this was the first hit. I checked again but did not find a more modern site anywhere. Did you?
    - jasonlotito 5y ago
      https://www.w3schools.com/about/default.asp https://www.w3schools.com/about/default.asp
      - cies 5y ago
        That's about w3schools (a product) not the company behind it.
- NavinF 5y ago
  Personally I found that page and photo to be adorable and it improved my overall impression of w3shools from “an acceptable target of ridicule” to “aww, they’re trying their best even if they’re a bit clueless”. If HN allowed embedded media, you can bet there would be a headpat animation in this comment.
  - black_puppydog 5y ago
    > improved my overall impression of w3shools from “an acceptable target of ridicule” to “aww, they’re trying their best even if they’re a bit clueless” Funny how that works, huh? Here's a pertinent rule that some^Wall here may^Wshould have seen before: > Remember the human https://www.britannica.com/topic/netiquette https://www.britannica.com/topic/netiquette
    - NavinF 5y ago
      Facts. This isn’t the first time I learned my hatred was irrational.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- ivanche 5y ago
  Not to defend w3schools but it seems you linked to some very old version of their site. This is the current About page: https://www.w3schools.com/about/default.asp https://www.w3schools.com/about/default.asp
luke2m 5y ago
Every page is an .asp file.
onion2k 5y ago
I expect it will knock w3schools of it's search result throne in the coming years. There's no practical incentive for Google to prioritize MDN over w3schools though. Google doesn't seem to rank sites on quality any more. I suspect they rank sites on "ad profitability" instead. Showing users websites that have adverts means users click on more adverts, which Google benefits from (by encouraging that user behavior even if they're not the ad publisher themselves). w3schools has been online since 1998. MDN has been online since 2005. Why would Google change the search results in the coming years rather than at any time in the previous 17 years if they were aiming for quality?
- cies 5y ago
  I did not ask Google to change it, I just hope they will soon loose to MDN (which is currently the second).
  - Jarwain 5y ago
    Recently MDN feels like it has been surpassing w3schools on more of my searches
syshum 5y ago
The concern is will MDN still be good in a few years now that Mozilla fired all of the professional technical writers that made MDN good and instead is going for the Wikipedia approach. I have my doubts the quality will remain
- jefftk 5y ago
  This article is about how they are not going for the Wikipedia approach. Instead of articles primarily being written by volunteers, they will mostly be written by paid techwriters at Open Web Docs.
  - jasonlotito 5y ago
    People don't read articles silly. They are going to complain that if they could contribute money to this, they would contribute so much extra money, but they can't because Mozilla takes it. Despite the article literally covering this very issue. Just read the comments here. And I'm willing to be they find a way to blame Mozilla for that ignorance.
Angostura 5y ago
I was under the impression that the W3Schools content had actually improved quite a bit over the last couple of years. No?
- archerx 5y ago
  It has and he is talking from a place of total ignorance.
o_m 5y ago
You can blacklist w3schools by using ublacklist: https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist There are also lists for blacklisting github and stackoverflow content clone sites.
archerx 5y ago
"I don't like something so no one should use it!" What kind of logic is that? I actually prefer going to w3schools because as a quick reference I find what I'm looking for much faster than MDN. It has interactive examples right at the top so you can get a quick idea on what a function does. I am happy that both exist. Either you are completely out of touch or you're going to need to show some of the "low quality" examples from w3schools.
- cies 5y ago
  You do you. I find MDN so much better that I hope they soon push w3schools off their first-hit-throne. > Either you are completely out of touch or you're going to need to show some of the "low quality" examples from w3schools. Do you really need me for that? Here are "div" and "table" on both. https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_table.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_table.asp https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/div https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/di... https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/table https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ta... To me the difference is enormous (quality of writing, completeness, correct use of words, ads, noise on the page). But again: see for yourself. Now read back yous comment and see if your "What kind of logic is that?" and "I don't like something so no one should use it!" were reasonable sentences to throw at me.
  - jka 5y ago
    Both seem fairly high quality to me, after reading the comments and viewing the pages from each site in comparison. I remember using w3schools to learn HTML probably about twenty years ago now, and the content hasn't changed much since then. MDN appears to have gone through two major transitions within the past year. Whether those qualities are good or bad depend on your perspective; whether one of them ranks above the other in terms of SEO depends on the algorithms used by the search engine in question.
  - archerx 5y ago
    I still prefer the w3schools version, I feel like it is better because it is concise and get straight to the point without a ton of blah blah, if I want an encyclopedic type of reference (which is rare) I go to mdn, but most of the times I just need quick reference that gets to the point immediately. Also I forget the internet has ads, don't you have ublock origin installed? Yes, they were totally reasonable sentences to throw at you because you want something to fail because of your subjective opinion disregarding if anyone else might find that something useful, it seems a bit solipsistic. I'm not saying mdn should be blocked, I'm saying I'm happy both exists, do you see the difference?
asiachick 5y ago
I'm often disappointed witu mdn as well. Lots of old examples using dated JavaScript passing on bad practices
- wbamberg 5y ago
  I agree. We are always trying to improve this but it's a huge task as MDN is such a big site. If you could please file issues (or PRs :) when you find bad practice examples, it would help.
drdec 5y ago
I always just add mdn to the search criteria if it's a search related to web technologies.

by cies 5y ago

cies 5y ago

Because of this rant I had a look at the company behind w3shools. This is their about page: https://w3schools.sinsixx.com/about/about_refsnes.asp.htm https://w3schools.sinsixx.com/about/about_refsnes.asp.htm If you want to communicate "stuck in the 90s", take this as your example! The photo of the "Web Masters", the favicon, the W3C-badges, the gif-badge webhosting ad, fixed-width, the CMS400 ad, the bordered boxes around everything. I had a blast.

Liquid_Fire 5y ago
To be fair, that seems to be a copy of the page from more than 10 years ago (note the "Copyright 1999-2009" in the footer). The current website still seems to be run by the same company but looks much more modern.
- cies 5y ago
  You are probably right. I just Google'd for "Refnes Data" (the name I found on the w3schools page) and this was the first hit. I checked again but did not find a more modern site anywhere. Did you?
  - jasonlotito 5y ago
    https://www.w3schools.com/about/default.asp https://www.w3schools.com/about/default.asp
    - cies 5y ago
      That's about w3schools (a product) not the company behind it.
NavinF 5y ago
Personally I found that page and photo to be adorable and it improved my overall impression of w3shools from “an acceptable target of ridicule” to “aww, they’re trying their best even if they’re a bit clueless”. If HN allowed embedded media, you can bet there would be a headpat animation in this comment.
- black_puppydog 5y ago
  > improved my overall impression of w3shools from “an acceptable target of ridicule” to “aww, they’re trying their best even if they’re a bit clueless” Funny how that works, huh? Here's a pertinent rule that some^Wall here may^Wshould have seen before: > Remember the human https://www.britannica.com/topic/netiquette https://www.britannica.com/topic/netiquette
  - NavinF 5y ago
    Facts. This isn’t the first time I learned my hatred was irrational.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
ivanche 5y ago
Not to defend w3schools but it seems you linked to some very old version of their site. This is the current About page: https://www.w3schools.com/about/default.asp https://www.w3schools.com/about/default.asp

luke2m 5y ago

Every page is an .asp file.

onion2k 5y ago

I expect it will knock w3schools of it's search result throne in the coming years. There's no practical incentive for Google to prioritize MDN over w3schools though. Google doesn't seem to rank sites on quality any more. I suspect they rank sites on "ad profitability" instead. Showing users websites that have adverts means users click on more adverts, which Google benefits from (by encouraging that user behavior even if they're not the ad publisher themselves). w3schools has been online since 1998. MDN has been online since 2005. Why would Google change the search results in the coming years rather than at any time in the previous 17 years if they were aiming for quality?

cies 5y ago
I did not ask Google to change it, I just hope they will soon loose to MDN (which is currently the second).
- Jarwain 5y ago
  Recently MDN feels like it has been surpassing w3schools on more of my searches

syshum 5y ago

The concern is will MDN still be good in a few years now that Mozilla fired all of the professional technical writers that made MDN good and instead is going for the Wikipedia approach. I have my doubts the quality will remain

jefftk 5y ago
This article is about how they are not going for the Wikipedia approach. Instead of articles primarily being written by volunteers, they will mostly be written by paid techwriters at Open Web Docs.
- jasonlotito 5y ago
  People don't read articles silly. They are going to complain that if they could contribute money to this, they would contribute so much extra money, but they can't because Mozilla takes it. Despite the article literally covering this very issue. Just read the comments here. And I'm willing to be they find a way to blame Mozilla for that ignorance.

Angostura 5y ago

I was under the impression that the W3Schools content had actually improved quite a bit over the last couple of years. No?

archerx 5y ago
It has and he is talking from a place of total ignorance.

o_m 5y ago

You can blacklist w3schools by using ublacklist: https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist https://github.com/iorate/ublacklist There are also lists for blacklisting github and stackoverflow content clone sites.

archerx 5y ago

"I don't like something so no one should use it!" What kind of logic is that? I actually prefer going to w3schools because as a quick reference I find what I'm looking for much faster than MDN. It has interactive examples right at the top so you can get a quick idea on what a function does. I am happy that both exist. Either you are completely out of touch or you're going to need to show some of the "low quality" examples from w3schools.

cies 5y ago
You do you. I find MDN so much better that I hope they soon push w3schools off their first-hit-throne. > Either you are completely out of touch or you're going to need to show some of the "low quality" examples from w3schools. Do you really need me for that? Here are "div" and "table" on both. https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_div.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_table.asp https://www.w3schools.com/tags/tag_table.asp https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/div https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/di... https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/table https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/ta... To me the difference is enormous (quality of writing, completeness, correct use of words, ads, noise on the page). But again: see for yourself. Now read back yous comment and see if your "What kind of logic is that?" and "I don't like something so no one should use it!" were reasonable sentences to throw at me.
- jka 5y ago
  Both seem fairly high quality to me, after reading the comments and viewing the pages from each site in comparison. I remember using w3schools to learn HTML probably about twenty years ago now, and the content hasn't changed much since then. MDN appears to have gone through two major transitions within the past year. Whether those qualities are good or bad depend on your perspective; whether one of them ranks above the other in terms of SEO depends on the algorithms used by the search engine in question.
- archerx 5y ago
  I still prefer the w3schools version, I feel like it is better because it is concise and get straight to the point without a ton of blah blah, if I want an encyclopedic type of reference (which is rare) I go to mdn, but most of the times I just need quick reference that gets to the point immediately. Also I forget the internet has ads, don't you have ublock origin installed? Yes, they were totally reasonable sentences to throw at you because you want something to fail because of your subjective opinion disregarding if anyone else might find that something useful, it seems a bit solipsistic. I'm not saying mdn should be blocked, I'm saying I'm happy both exists, do you see the difference?

asiachick 5y ago

I'm often disappointed witu mdn as well. Lots of old examples using dated JavaScript passing on bad practices

wbamberg 5y ago
I agree. We are always trying to improve this but it's a huge task as MDN is such a big site. If you could please file issues (or PRs :) when you find bad practice examples, it would help.

drdec 5y ago

I always just add mdn to the search criteria if it's a search related to web technologies.