The ICSC sees the stakes as being high. Not only is lousy content devaluing professional content in their eyes, it is making the Web experience worse for the average user. “The ICSC believes that content creators and publishers should work to preserve the utility of the Internet for users and advertisers alike,” reads the report. To do so, the ICSC guidelines—geared toward informational content, not opinion or entertainment—are focused on the importance of journalistic principles. For example, the guidelines encourage that formal editorial processes be adhered to whether articles are produced by staff writers or freelancers. All Web articles should be date stamped, and all corrections be clearly labeled. Plus, perhaps most controversially—the ICSC believes that a writer's credentials should be prominently displayed alongside their work.

[O]ne could easily use Drupal's built-in user access controls, content types, and taxonomy capabilities to create a simple style guide involving several contributors. For different or specific functionality, you could even use book features or add wiki-like behaviors with other modules. We did something similar to this with our own firm handbook; it's meant as a collaborative repository of Digett's own policies and procedures. Our own style requirements—few as they may be—could easily be included, if I ever get tired of housing them in my own noggin.

Whether on the supply side of content and applications, or on the distribution and run-time side of the equation, what is abundantly clear is that reach is still king. For platform makers, these battles will continue as they all seek to drive sufficient reach for their open and proprietary standards such that they can exploit this distribution for their core commercial goals. Likewise, and more important, whatever standards and models deliver the broadest reach will ultimately drive what is adopted by publishers, developers and ISVs.

“At this point it was a huge Excel spreadsheet,” says Schmitt. “For some weird reason, the data started in January of ‘04 and it ended in like April of ’09. And we couldn’t figure out why does it end there? Assange later comes and says it doesn’t end there—you just gotta open up a new screen or whatever… It was clear that we were going to need some technical assistance”.