First, I agree strongly with Brandon on virtually all of this, with one minor clarification.

My read is that his "no foo" requirements don't disallow sites from using CSS, javascript, plugins, etc, but require that core functionality be available without these. At the very least the ability to read the page.

I'm leaning strongly to sites focusing on a small number of basic design templates and allowing strong user deference in how those are styled: article, homepage, gallery, slideshow, catalog page. That may be a vain hope, but most sites operate with a small set of basic templates, and tools such as LaTeX have achieved tremendous mileage from a small set of standard document types. Yes, they tend to look similar. ThatsThePoint.jpg.

As a strong counterexample, take another current HN story, "On doing things other people can't", a Blogspot post:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10136955
http://pathsensitive.blogspot.com/2015/08/sources-of-power.h...

Unless I specifically enable JS for pathsensitive.blogspot.com, www.blogger.com, and www.blogblog.com, the article displays as a blank page.

Even with these enabled, the page is awkward to read -- a pop-out menue overlays the top of the scrollbar, the fonts are too small, the line length too long, and an annoying persistent header overlays the top 25% of the page (including browser elements: titlebar, tabs, navigation, and menus). I literally transcribed raw text to Markdown to read the entry

Of major blogging sites, Blogspot's among the worst for default themes, and its "dynamic" themes are especially bad.

I'm among those who've been ranting about the horrible state of the Web for basic reading for some time:

https://redd.it/256lxu
https://redd.it/29eqrk

So, if I may offer some interpretations of Brandon's suggestions:

Completely override-able CSS: Not "don't use CSS", but "use a standard, minimal page structure which allows elements to be readily identified and styled, and don't go fucking overboard with styling.

Compare, Mark Pilgrim's Dive Into HTML5, which 1) has a really nice default stylesheet, and a really fucking minimal page structure:

http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html
view-source:http://diveintohtml5.info/index.html

The entity nesting depth is mostly one (there's not even <article> tags), rarely more than two.

Contrast that with pages in which every single element is explicitly styled inline and absolutely positioned. I've got a "bruteforce.css" which strips most such nonsense. As Brandon notes, excessive div nesting is almost always a sign of such breakage.

No client-side scripts: Again, to simply read the site. See the Blogspot example above.

Plugins: As before. Better: look through old sites featuring A/V content and note the instances of RealPlayer requirements. I'm not sure that plugin's even available any more, I certainly wouldn't want to rely on it. Sites which provided WAV files, or better, MP3 or OGG downloads, still work. Sites reliant on proprietary plugins, not so much. Flash and client-side Java are rapidly heading here, similarly Silverlight (specific to Microsoft MSIE).

Advertising: Many or most of the problems online are a direct consequence of advertising: bloated pages, cross-site scripting, security vulnerabilities, and crap content. I see a fundamental need to change the funding model, though no clear path to doing so.

No frames, multi-columns or other visual clutter: On this I agree. I've restyled many sites to push sidebars, asides, floats, etc, either above or below the main content. I'll occasionally encounter such sites unstyled and ... it's usually a shock.

See: https://redd.it/1tm4ox

Examples:

Stock/multicolumn: http://i.imgur.com/80zmE3i.png http://i.imgur.com/M2OiyOU.png

Modified/single column: http://i.imgur.com/nBdCZoY.png http://i.imgur.com/sNoOdZp.png

No non-standard fonts: The problems I have here are, variously:

1. WebFonts which simply do not render. Medium.com on my (ancient) Android mobile device is completely blank, as is Wired.com. This is annoying.

2. Fucking with font-weight, letter-spacing, and/or text-shadow. You do not want to do this for body text EVER. My instant response on seeing such a page is to simply sigh. Usually I'll move on.

Pagination: This is an absolute. There's no need to break up content any shorter than a book chapter (though improved content navigation for longer works is a weakness of HTML).

Account requirements/registration: Data. Are. Liability. Any time you request user data, you should ask yourself, "can we not do this?" You cannot lose what you do not have. You will lose what you do have, though when, where, to whom, and how far after the fact you realise it are all open questions.

What's really sad is how old most of these guidelines are.

Jacob Nielsen compiled his original list of 10 mistakes in Web design in 1996. Modulo a few technology nomenclature changes, they all still apply:

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/original-top-ten-mistakes-in...

1. Using Frames (now: iFrames)

2. Gratuitous Use of Bleeding-Edge Technology

3. Scrolling Text, Marquees, and Constantly Running Animations (carousels, autoplay video)

4. Complex URLs

5. Orphan Pages

6. Long Scrolling Pages (for landing pages. For articles, not so much)

7. Lack of Navigation Support (also: mystery-meat navigation, see "hamburger").

8. Non-Standard Link Colors (now: nonstandard any colours. Fad now is fucking with ::selection colours).

9. Outdated Information

10. Overly Long Download Times

Nielsen's returned to that topic many times, see:

"Ten Good Deeds in Web Design":

http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-good-deeds-in-web-design...

"'Top Ten Mistakes' Revisited Three Years Later"
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-ten-mistakes-revisited-t...

"113 Design Guidelines for Homepage Usability" (October 31, 2001)
http://www.useit.com/articles/113-design-guidelines-homepage...

"The Ten Most Violated Homepage Design Guidelines" (November 10, 2003)
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/most-violated-homepage-guide...

Note especially: 2. Use a liquid layout that lets users adjust the homepage size. Yes, responsive design. In two thousand fucking three.