CSS-Tricks could be a co-op

I owe a lot of my professional identity and success to CSS-Tricks.

CSS-Tricks repeatedly gave me the opportunity to write for them. In doing so, the immense popularity and huge reach of the publication helped to both socialize and normalize accessibility as a mainstream frontend concern. I’m deeply thankful to them for this.

The team was also a joy to work with, notably Geoff Graham. He’s a mensch, and one of the nicest people you can interact with in the frontend web space.

If you have not been following the news about the site, Kevin Powell has a good video about the whole situation:

Skip YouTube video embed.

I’m not speaking on behalf of Geoff, Chris, or others involved with running the current version of CSS-Tricks. I’ve got skin in the game as an author—this is my personal opinion, born of my experience, feelings, and beliefs.

I think a lot of the web’s infrastructure should be co-ops, and CSS-Tricks is knowledge infrastructure. To that point, I should also point out that the website covers far more than just CSS.

The corporate model of ownership can be a risk. If infrastructure is not part of a corporation’s core strategy, it is not a priority. And if it is not a priority it is effectively dead. You learn this lesson repeatedly working in accessibility.

As Kevin’s video touched on, it seems like promotion via owning the frontend content space isn’t part of Digital Ocean’s strategy anymore. It is not that CSS-Tricks does not have value. It is that Digital Ocean cannot see it.

It is deeply, tragically ironic to me that Digital Ocean allowed this all to transpire. This is because I know for a fact that the techniques and philosophies shared by CSS-Trick authors helped to shape iterations of their product’s UI.

Some may be quick to point out that this knowledge now—illegally—exists inside of LLM training data, so the risk of the website going away is mitigated. To this, know that we should be striving to keep resources like CSS-Tricks going.

Human creativity is the force that creates new techniques, strategies, and technologies. From clever hacks all the way to deep and thoughtful system design, it is sources of knowledge like CSS-Tricks that create the organic, interrelated associations that lead to the breakthroughs that lift all of us collectively up.

The web will calcify without voices sharing what they know, forever locking us into endless permutations of a fixed point in time.

Unlike corporations, co-ops don’t have to be motivated by profit. By not needing to prioritize growth at all costs it means co-ops can instead prioritize and incentivise things like preservation and cultivation. It is also a successful model of operation, one that even already exists and flourishes in the tech space.

Collective ownership can also serve as checks and balances for, and protection against hierarchical decision-making. I only need to point to the chaotic and aberrant decisions many CEOs in the technology space have been making as of late to demonstrate the value of this approach.

Paddy Srinivasan, if you somehow wind up reading this: Save some face and take a big swing. Give CSS-Tricks back to the people who love it.