"What is the Suck Quotient, and what does it matter to me?" you're asking, and rightly so. Basically, the Suck Quotient™ is a way of assessing how sucky your web pages are. See the glossary for more details.
The Suck Quotient™ gives you a number that you can quote, similar to the reading indices for normal documents, when you want people to know how good (or crap) you are at internet design. Before I go into the precise scoring, here are some benchmark scores to aim at:
Suck Quotient™ < 0 Your pages blow (negative suckiness), and are therefore cool. 100 > Suck Quotient™ > 0 Normal, slightly sucky, but then who isn't 1000 > Suck Quotient™ > 100 Highly sucky. Your pages suck, and so do you. 10000 > Suck Quotient™ > 1000 Extremely sucky. Like an industrial vacuum cleaner. Suck Quotient™ > 10000 Do the words "Black Hole" mean anything to you?
Ok, so you want to know how to calculate the Suck Quotient™? Here are the factors:
[NB] These include items linked to the page, as well as on it directly.It might help if you have this list up alongside your page while you calculate it. Try using Ed "sucky" Jordan's Sucky Frameset...
Offence Factor Reason Is there a picture of you? +50 Ego trip Is there a picture of your better half? +30 I'm sure you deserve him / her Is there a picture of your child? +20 Yes, very nice Is there a picture of your pet? +200 You're not getting away with this... Is your CV linked to the page? +100 It's pretty sucky, you've got to admit Is your CV on the site, but not linked anywhere, so you can give the URL to anyone who needs it, but not every Tom, Dick and Recruitment Agency? -50 It's ok as long as nobody sees it Are there any sound files? +100 Why? Are there any sound files of chickens? +500 A bit specific, but there you go Does the sound file auto-play when you enter the page? +1000 Look, it's just plain tacky Have you included an audio jukebox control? +10000 WHY?!?! Is there a list of links that nobody but you will be interested in? +20 It is a bit lame... Is your page a frameset? +200 Just give me a good reason ...You did give me a good reason -200 Ok, I'll let you off this time.... Have you used a sucky background that makes the page difficult to read? +100 You *know* why Have you linked every word you can think of to something else? +50 Oh bugger, that's this page gone for a start Have you registered a vanity domain for your pages? +200 What a waste of money, it's like everyone is going to remember it, right? Have you used a spectacularly garish colour scheme? +50 It's ok, just because you can, I hear you saying Have you failed to put a title on your page (or failed to do it right)? +30 Pay attention at the back, will you Is there a PGP key for you on the page? +100 You're soooo important... Do you use Animated Gifs? +20 They'll probably be tacky Do you use scripting? +50 It probably won't work with every browser ...It does work, and is useful. -30 Ok, it can come in useful sometime Do you use Java Applets? +200 Bandwidth ahoy! Are there "Best viewed with" etc logos on the page. +10 Brown noser Have you put a "voted best site etc" logo on the page. +20 The site probably didn't suck before you put the logo on Bad/incorrect HTML +500 You could, like, check it... Not bothering to check the spelling/grammar +300 It's not that hard to do, is it? Excessive punctuation, smileys etc. +100 It's not e-mail, ok? Failing to work with all major browsers +1000 It's ok on an Intranet, but this is the Internet, remember... Not bothering to set the body color +20 Do you really like the defaults? Is your page "under construction"? +50 Put it up when it is finished! Does your page have an "under construction" icon? +100 see above ...Is it animated? +1000 If you'd spent as much time working on the page as you'd spent doing this kind of crap, you'd have finished it by now When was the last time the page was updated? +50 per 100 days What is it doing there if it is out of date, eh? Are there any broken off-site links? +100 You could check it every now and then. ...or even broken links to your own site? +1000 It's your fault, there's no getting away from it. You've put a video clip on-line +10000 It's a waste of bandwidth, it will look crap, and who cares, anyway?
This page has a Suck
Quotient™ of 50 (probably, but I can't be arsed to check it)
Note: I did change it to 100, since I hadn't updated it for 100 days, but that was an
update, so it's back to where it was.
Suck (verb): (to) Be of poor quality
sucky (adjective): Something that sucks
Suckiness (adverb): How much something sucks
lame (adjective): Another word for sucky