Sometimes. Bear in mind the W3C's audience is pretty much only techie,
I will bite the "playing Devil's Advocate" bait - and say I disagree
with that thought. Although W3C is often seen as an URL recommended in
tech-thought forums or discussions to others - it is also recommended
to a broad range of people. Susie Housewife wanting to create a site
on up to Jill Designer. And yes, I have seen W3C's URL shared with
people expressing an interest in learning even a small bit of HTML in
places where the techie-dominance thought, in terms of people sharing
the URL or inquiring about HTML, was extremely low.
W3C's contents are also more flexible than the other sites mentioned.
One can take the W3C's pages and put it into a different layout and
create nifty/cool images for it and viola - fresh appearance, more
colorful and vibrant perhaps ... but doesn't affect the value of the
contents either - so remains a reource site for people of all levels.
Not limited to just "techie people" being interested in that content -
even if it is written a bit dry.
The other sites have decided to handle the delivery-style of their
content differently - which in turn can make it a bit more limiting in
HOW that content is shared and what kind ofsite design thoughts would
help have that content be "appealing". This is without factoring the
"targetted audience"'s perceived 'expectations' on what is a 'cool
looking site' thoughts. So I agree that MTV cannot adopt W3C's current
appearance.
A site targetted to children under the age of 10 will present contents
and have a different design thought for those contents than, say, a
site targetted to parents of children under the age or 10, someone
seeking information about a recent Britney Spears video, or someone
seeking information about how to use HTML. [Which design thoughts
doesn't really have anything to do with failure to share valid markup
to begin with *shrug*]
My sites' contents would probably suck in a layout similar to MTV's -
my contents aren't that flexible to be presented in the same manner
though either. Doesn't lower the value of my contents - just that the
layout/design didn't match what I was offering people. Likewise I
don't think W3C would consider trying to replicate MTV's design for
their contents.
W3C inspires people other ways - through the information shared. W3C
isn't meant to be inspiring people's eyes "hey - this is a cool
looking site" - so unlikely that many people would be asking "how can
I copy their design ..." whereas some people, whose site's contents
may not be of similar favor of MTV's offerings, may ask "How can I
replicate that design ..." based on visual appearance alone.
In terms of "who cares" - I doubt MTV's CEO or higher ups sat down and
designed the site but hired/paid someone else to do ... so thinking,
due to paying, that the person knows what they are doing beyond
slapping up some nifty graphics into a layout or had a nifty roll-over
effect on the menu.
The MTV folks may not have run the pages through a validator before
paying or uploading either. The site designer is probably the one who
should've cared but already guessed they could slide on things as long
as the finished product just "looked nifty" to the client's eyes ...
Which only has other people inspired, inadvertantly, into thinking
"why should I care if my site isn't using valid markup and sites X Y
and Z [& the person who created those sites] don't seem to care ..."
And. as the carny folks would say, "and around around it goes ..."
Carol