Patterns are nouns. Typically, they are identifiable things, which emerge, or are created, to resolve a set of pressures or problems. They are typically GENERIC ... they have emerged before, although usually in a unique way, adapted for the particulars of a situation. And for our purposes, patterns are GOOD. (An anti-pattern (-) is BAD.) And patterns should be GOOD for the WHOLE system. The SCALE at which they should be applied as a solution should also be clear. It should be clear at which STAGE of development they should emerge. They should also just be RIGHT: i.e. a pattern should make sense both to your head and your heart.

Here you'll see me generally aiming at finding GRADIENTS of patterns, because, to me, patterns are most useful when collected into SEQUENCES.

Note that a blog certainly doesn't have the right kind of order for this work. What I have here is essentially "scratch paper", or "working papers", for patterns which themselves will eventually be presented as a gradient, in order. Of course, that kind of webapp is a pattern: "GRADIENT SEQUENCE".

(-) Ads that nobody will click

It's brilliant to put click-through advertising in places where people are looking either for something specific (as when they use Google), or at content pages near their target.

It's brilliant to put web ads where people are socializing, venting or just fooling around (like YouTube).

It's not so brilliant to put ads in delicate states, like editing states, for webmail or web services generally -- because no one's going to click on a link, when there's a perfectly reasonable possibility that they will lose their work!

In the spirit of the currently canonical definition of "anti-pattern", what is a better generic solution to the problem this is trying to resolve?

The problem: revenue. "Advertising" is the pattern. One version "Display advertising" can be applied all over an application. Another, "click-through advertising", can't be applied everywhere. So, this is really an "anti-pattern" in the sense of a genetic "suppressor" which prevents (based on experience) the "click-through advertising" pattern from being applied to states where the user is editing something. Use "No Advertising", or "Display Advertising", instead.

by Greg Bryant Tuesday, October 17, 2006 12:33 PM

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