GungnirSniper writes:
"Coupon code website VoucherCloud.net's publicity firm, 10 Yetis PR, recently released a press release on VoucherCloud's behalf. The release stated that of 2,392 American adults polled, 11% thought 'HTML [is a] Sexually-transmitted disease,' and 23% thought 'MP3 [is a] Star Wars Robot. The media, beginning with the LA Times ran with the story seemingly without digging into the facts and other sites echoed the story. 10 Yetis PR has a page showing screenshots of much of the coverage. iMediaEthics noted the survey results were not available at the time, and that 'Vouchercloud's publicity firm, 10 Yetis PR, lists its work in viral marketing and stunts on its website.' 10 Yetis PR provided similar poll results late last year that one in six UK residents have never visited their local bank branch.
Is this good publicity seeking by 10 Yetis for VoucherCloud, or simply poor journalism on behalf of the media who uncritically ran the story?"
Related Stories
"Front-end" developer, Pete Lambert, writes about why front-end "web" developers should start to learn HTML. More and more developers are using only pre-made frameworks and quite unfamiliar with the fundmentals of the technology they are using, such as semantic markup. He notes that the continued failure to pay attention to the basics of semantics is slowly breaking what's left of the World Wide Web and suggests reasons to correct that and has some pointers to learning resources.
I’m a ‘frontend of the frontend’ kind of guy. My expertise is in HTML and CSS, so it’s easy for me to wax lyrical about why everybody should learn what I already know (for the record, I don’t know it all - we still have heated debates in the office about what the best way to mark up a certain component might be). This isn’t about ‘my job’s more important than yours. If you’re writing code that renders things in a browser, this is your job.
It’s about usability and accessibility. If you don’t think the semantic structure of your Web page or app is important then you’re essentially saying “Well, it works for me in my browser, ship it”. I don’t think you’d do that with your Javascript and you certainly shouldn’t be doing it with your CSS. Search engines need to read your content, not enjoy your swoopy animations or fancy gradients. Screen reader software needs to read your content. Keyboard users need to read your content. Who knows what technology will come next and how it will consume your app but I’ll bet my bottom Bitcoin it’ll work better if it can easily read, parse and traverse your content. The way these things read your content is that they know it’s actually content and not just strings of text wrapped in meaningless tags. They know what’s a table and how to present it, they know what’s a list and how to present it, they know what’s a button and what’s a checkbox. Make everything from divs and they’re going to have to work bloody hard to figure that out.
Earlier on SN:
How to Build and Host an Energy Efficient Web Site (2018)
Conservative Web Development (2018)
Dodgy Survey Shows 1 in 10 Believe HTML is an STD? (2014)
(Score: 4, Funny) by nukkel on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:18PM
JavaScript is worse than an STD.
HTML, not so much.
And oh yeah, first post!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:23PM
JS = Job Security
(Score: 2, Funny) by infodragon on Thursday March 06 2014, @11:09PM
Like the meat world, inadequate protection can result in terrible infection. Not much need to worry about plain vanilla HTML, such as being in a monogamous relationship. But once you invite dynamic content you expose yourself to many possible vectors of infection. HTML is just the framework for the real activity, like foreplay. It won't get you infected but really isn't that interesting by its self. Once the interesting stuff begins, unless you are in a trusted network, monogamous, you must have protection. So... HTML is not an STD but is the close enough for the non-techie to recognize as technical and something to do with the internet. They are most likely not conscious of the reason they select STD, but the frodian slip indicates a latent rage about maleware infection and probably something to do with their mother.
Operating an unprotected windows PC on the internet is like Kate Upton offering herself to the world without protection. Not only does she get infected but so does everybody else after she's been infected.
I think I'm too tired to be posting to SN but I lack the will power to not press submit. Please forgive me!
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 2) by nukkel on Friday March 07 2014, @07:01AM
the frodian slip indicates a latent rage about maleware infection
Well played, Sir.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by bill_mcgonigle on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:21PM
It's becoming sad that there's little difference between the news "media" and storage "media" - both can be used to make exact copies of information without any additional processing.
I was following a blog of one guy, a few weeks ago, who went on the Daily Show, and the DS took a 3-hour interview he did and chopped it up into a few minute segment to really misrepresent the guy. That's a cheap trick for a comedy program, but that's just a comedy program. What was really bad was that newspapers then picked up the new "quotes" from the Daily Show and ran with them, without doing any verification.
I guess that's one advantage of storage media - you can pretty easily do verification.
(Score: 1) by DeathMonkey on Thursday March 06 2014, @08:03PM
...chopped it up into a few minute segment to really misrepresent the guy. That's a cheap trick for a comedy program, but that's just a comedy program. What was really bad was that newspapers then picked up the new "quotes" from the Daily Show and ran with them, without doing any verification.
The best are when "The Onion" stories get picked up:
9 great examples. [thedailybeast.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:21PM
I also thought HTML is an STD.
Oh, wait, you say "STD" does not stay for "standard"? Well, then ...
(Score: 1) by tempest on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:34PM
I have to question how this study was conducted. What is HTML? How many people who answered correctly know what that acronym stands for? You know what, I don't know a whole lot of acronyms either. If go to a hospital they speak an entire acronym language I can't understand. People are going backwards with their knowledge of specific terms, but it's not like that gains them much. Is it HTML or a web page? Is it a URL or a web address? These days I catch myself saying these things and I see it's fairly common for people to not understand, compared to 12 years ago when people often attended classes on how to use computers. That doesn't make them more or less tech savvy since they still use computers the same way. This seems suspiciously like a multiple choice questionnaire where people just guessed if they didn't know.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:19PM
Well, obviously HTML stands for Hacker Tool Malicious Language. Stuff written in that language is generally transmitted using HTTP (Hacker Tool Transfer Protocol) which runs on top of TCP/IP (Terror and Crime Protocol/Illegal Protocol).
SCNR :-)
(Score: 3, Informative) by captain normal on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:41PM
From the second link that GungnirSniper provided in his well done summary:
"The study was conducted by www.vouchercloud.net as part of research into the technology-related knowledge of consumers across the US, given that ‘technology coupons’ has been amongst the top searched-for terms on-site for the past 12 months consecutively. 2,392 men and women aged 18 and over from across the US took part, and were required to put their tech knowledge to the test.
The study presented respondents with a list of technology related terms, as well as non-technology related terms; and asked them to select from a choice of three possible definitions what best defined the word they had been shown."
In other words it was a multiple choice survey, with 3 answers to choose from. It was also an online survey. How many knowledgeable people take part in these kind of surveys?
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 1) by tempest on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:28PM
Maybe it was too early in the morning or my eyes glossed over from sensationalism of the data, so thanks for clarifying that. If I were vouchercloud.net I'd be pretty upset with the way things are being inferred with their data, but it's also partially their fault. If you want to gauge knowledge then one of your answers really should be "I don't know". With only three options, I'm guessing that wasn't one of them. They should have released this data stating " xx% do not know what USB is" and not released what the other test choices.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Thexalon on Thursday March 06 2014, @02:54PM
"30 Helens Agree: Ban DHMO"
You can get a poll saying just about anything if you word the questions correctly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 4, Funny) by dotdotdot on Thursday March 06 2014, @03:00PM
and 76% of all statistics are made up anyway
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @04:26PM
Sorry, your statistics isn't credible. You always need a decimal point to make credible statistics.
And the made-up statistics certainly amount to 87.3%.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mth on Thursday March 06 2014, @03:02PM
From the full results [google.com]:
HTML
Given that the two wrong answers both get about 10%, I assume about 10% chose the correct answer as a guess, so that means about 70% of the people interviewed knows what HTML is. That doesn't sound so bad.
(Strictly speaking, the correct answer isn't there, as HTML is a markup language and not a programming language.)
So I think it's not so much the survey itself that is dodgy, but the reporting of it. "1 in 10 believe HTML is an STD" makes a catchy headline, but it is unlikely those people would have answered "an STD" to an open question.
(Score: 1) by carguy on Thursday March 06 2014, @06:24PM
> ... That doesn't sound so bad.
Agreed, not too bad. As a good friend in Washington DC pointed out some time ago, when dealing with the public in general, it's a good idea to remember that (by definition) about half the people have an IQ less than 100. Not that IQ is all that great of a metric, but it may say something about how well read a person is?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 07 2014, @12:31AM
> half the people have an IQ less than 100
Half of all midgets are below the average height for midgets.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 06 2014, @03:03PM
Most like that one where you are mauled in the genitals by an angry gopher.
(Score: 1) by egcagrac0 on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:01PM
Surprised that so many doge's elected to reply to the survey, that's all.
(Score: 2) by mtrycz on Thursday March 06 2014, @05:51PM
that is all.
In capitalist America, ads view YOU!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by skullz on Thursday March 06 2014, @10:51PM
Yes.