Hypertext vs. Papertext: Trust Your Webweaver

First off, in case you don't know, a webweaver or webmaster is the person who writes and codes your web pages. If there are multiple people writing your Web pages, they are all webweavers, but the one who actually controls what is on the public page is your webmaster.

It seems implicit that you should trust everyone who works for your company, but the webweaver is a special case. Your webweavers and webmaster become an interface between you and your customers or other audience. If you owned a large company (and maybe you do), wouldn't you make sure that you trusted your salespeople? They would be your primary interface with the customer. Well, your webweaver is your primary interface with the customer in this medium. If your webweaver puts something racist or sexist on your page, that could hurt your business and your credibility as much as if a salesperson made the same comment to a customer...except that your audience on the WWW is not just one person; it's millions.

In many companies, there are also fewer layers of editing with their Web presentation as compared to their papertext presentation. This makes trust of your webweaver even more important. What the webweaver puts up typically does not go through as many managers and technical writers for proofreading as most papertext documents, such as brochures, do. Know your webweaver and know that he or she won't be likely to put something embarrassing on one of your pages.

A poignant example of this is the webweaver for Kmart. He decided to put a link from the last period on the last sentence of the Kmart home page to his personal page. From his personal page, you could easily access pornographic material. This caused a major uproar and got him fired. The actual reason for dismissal was (I believe) misuse/personal use of company property.

Consider this a word of warning. If it's okay for your webweavers to link to their own pages, then either tell them or don't worry about it; if it's not then tell them now. Protect yourself from embarrassment. It also doesn't hurt to look at your group's or company's Web page once in awhile.

Which path would you like to follow?

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