While the high profile  websites can afford to use guidelines about usability that apply to everybody, the challenge is more severe when communicating with a small group.

Many of the general principles of usability break down when applied to niche communications. When audience motivation is high, the idiosyncrasies of a small author/publisher are endearing and actually facilitate usability. The exact same approach fails at 'scale'.

So, the next most important usability question is "How large is my audience?" followed immediately by "How motivated are they to consume my stuff?"

 -John Sumser