An interesting idea. Fowler certainly deserves credit for her work. As the author correctly notes, it was not only a courageous thing to publish, but also an impressive piece of writing.
On an unrelated note, the experience of reading this article for me was absolutely destroyed by the Forbes ad-block-blocker and the ad-first design of their article view. There were a couple of autoplaying video ads and one particularly pernicious scroll-locking ad on the sidebar to the right. Forbes is one of the very worst offenders in web monetization, as they demand you turn off AdBlock and then serve you a garbage reading experience (usually of a poorly written article by an unpaid or low-paid "contributor"). Every time I visit their website, I feel a sudden urge to start espousing Ev William's gospel that Something Must Be Done about content monetization on the internet, before Futurama becomes reality:
I've stopped reading Forbes articles because of it. I have no problem with sites monetizing their valuable content (I subscribe to the WSJ and FT because I generally value their product), but the in-your-face "you may not proceed" approach employed by Forbes really irks me for some reason.
Must be incredibly frustrating for you. Forbes is a prestigious outlet, a place where you should be proud to publish your work... yet they go out of their way to make it a huge hassle to read it.
That's gracious, thanks. Still, each writing home has its own mix of +/-. The overall Forbes environment offers fast turnaround, editorial freedom and sizable readership. And it pays! Getting 80% of my top five priorities in one stop is about as good as it ever gets.
Still, writing with fewer ads has its appeal, too. I'll mix things up every now and then with some postings for Quora, Technology Review, WSJ, etc., which fill in other circles in life's Venn diagram.
uBlock Origin has anti-anti-adblocker code which results in a perfectly readable forbes.com (and many other sites on which other adblockers drop the ball)
On an unrelated note, the experience of reading this article for me was absolutely destroyed by the Forbes ad-block-blocker and the ad-first design of their article view. There were a couple of autoplaying video ads and one particularly pernicious scroll-locking ad on the sidebar to the right. Forbes is one of the very worst offenders in web monetization, as they demand you turn off AdBlock and then serve you a garbage reading experience (usually of a poorly written article by an unpaid or low-paid "contributor"). Every time I visit their website, I feel a sudden urge to start espousing Ev William's gospel that Something Must Be Done about content monetization on the internet, before Futurama becomes reality:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGklt4BSQ8