I just read one fricking fantastic post by Andy Rutledge on web quality.

This is great - it defines the ongoing battle between designers who support web standards, and those who ignore/shun/berate them, as basically being a matter of semantics. That is, web standards are not about standardization or compliance, as some would maintain; web standards are really about the quality of web craft. ‘Standard’ is a high level of quality to strive for, not the confining destroyer of uniqueness in design that some would have us believe.

This is so simple and really gets to the heart of the matter, but I never thought of explaining it this way.

Andy also talks about the misuse of the search engines. Search engines being a completely essential tool for correctly organizing all that information on the web and being able to call it up - correctly - when that information is sought - this is the purpose of a search engine; like an enormous virtual card catalog. Andy says that it’s “irresponsible to hinder this worthy task” by viewing the search engines as only things to be manipulated or exploited for commercial or personal gain.

I highly recommend that all the web designers I know go read this article. Quality is what being a professional is all about!