Here is another case of site owners who have unwisely deferred operations to a webmaster. Then they don't monitor the site.
The site is ww.24hgold.com. It sends out a daily letter. But the site is messed up -- permanently.
I spotted a major problem on the site. It has a list of articles that covers up the latest articles. You cannot read the latest articles. This is self-defeating.
I produced a screencast alerting the webmaster to the problem. I use Screencast-O-Matic to produce short videos on site problems. Webmasters can see exactly what's wrong. Take a look at my video:
Then I tried to send this link to the webmaster. This is not possible with 24gold.com. I had forgotten this. The site does not allow anyone to contact them. I have prepared a video on this problem.
This sort of thing goes on all the time. Somebody sets up a site, and spends a lot of money trying to keep it up-to-date. This site publishes many articles every day. What the owners of the site don't believe in paying attention to business. They don't believe that somebody in senior management should be made responsible for the failures of the site. They also don't hold the webmaster responsible, because they cannot determine for themselves when and where the webmaster has fouled up.
They don't hire a minimum-wage beta tester to go through the site on a regular basis every day, or at least once a week, to make certain that the kinds of mistakes that I have recorded don't take place.
For months, I have tried to contact people at 24gold.com. The site operates every day exactly the way I show it in the video. Nobody is minding the store. This includes the webmaster. Nobody is minding the webmaster. Anybody who creates a comprehensive website with lots of content dares not turn over the management of this site to a webmaster who is not under constant observation. Things fall apart on websites, and unless webmasters fear being exposed as incompetents, and unless there is a systematic program of beta-testing everything, every day, on the assumption that nothing works, the webmasters will not take care of business.
A webmaster is not paid on commission. He is paid a salary. Unless somebody monitors him to make certain that he is not making serious mistakes on the site, he will not feel the pressure to go to the extra effort to make certain, every day, that the site operates properly. Management is in charge of this. Somebody in senior management is not paying attention to the site. This is going to cost the company money. It is not going to cost the webmaster any money. The webmaster is going to be paid, whether anybody comes to the site or not, unless everybody gets fired at once. So, the webmaster has no particular incentive to make certain that mistakes like this don't happen. Besides, nobody alerts them to the problem, because the way he has set up the site, nobody can alert anybody to anything at the company.
We assume that senior management will take care of things like this. We should not assume any such thing.
Now consider how the federal government operates. If you think private business is lax, consider the federal government. Consider the lack of beta-testing at the federal level. Consider the lack of incentive, financially speaking, in the lives of people who are protected by Civil Service legislation from ever being fired. There simply are not significant negative sanctions in the lives of federal bureaucrats, or government bureaucrats in general, to make them perform at the top level. This is an advantage for liberty, but it certainly is not an advantage for efficiency.
When a private company runs the shop the way to the federal government runs the government, that company is going to get into financial trouble eventually. Probably sooner than later.
© 2022 GaryNorth.com, Inc., 2005-2021 All Rights Reserved. Reproduction without permission prohibited.