Clearly much care goes into its editing and design, and there is much depth in its writing. It's a well-made site that brings real content and real value to the Web. Unfortunately, quietly intelligent sites like Mappa Mundi rarely garner the accolades they deserve, at least at this stage of the Web's history. Fortunately, both sites mentioned continue to gather large numbers of readers, because readers pay no attention to awards anyway - they go where the quality is. In our view, a good site is one which provides meaningful content for a particular audience.
Communities gather around such sites.
Readers and viewers come back for more. It's all good. To work on any good site can be deeply rewarding, creatively and emotionally, whether the materials are Flash and Quicktime, or HTML and gifs. How much better it could be if a gifted designer were to rework the site, while respecting its bandwidth and technological baseline. Few indeed, because the site offers no opportunity to overtly strut your stuff.