This is a sample of the reply Sid felt like leaving on a particular article about Drupal eliminating the middleman.

I hate to say it, but you erred in the very beginning when you said that Amazon and online Photo Processing eliminated the middleman. Actually, they created an extra middleman. Amazon has no inventory, they link to bookstores and warehouses who are still very much in the chain, and perform as a mediary between customers, bookstores, and inventory houses.

Online Photo Processing has gone in similar directions as Amazon, introducing an extra player to connect more customers with the mom/pop photo store that actually still does the developing.

Not to gripe, but this is one of the most common "mis-speaks" about the role of the internet in the logistics channel of commerce.

The Internet has been touted for it's ability to "eliminate the middleman," and it often can do just that. Too often this damn Amazon example pops up, though, and it just aint' right. With direct sales, a manufacturer can eliminate their middleman, being a wholesaler or distributor, and sell directly to end customers through the channel of the Internet.  However, a manufacturer may lose relationships with retailers by doing this, and therefore lose sales overall. Eliminating the middleman isn't the case for every website, nor every business that implements an online strategy, but the sake of this article is not to argue one way or the other about that. There are as many cases of the Internet creating additional middlemen, as there are of removing middlemen. 

This article is just a reaction to author Buyteart's theory of the dwindling role of the webmaster. Now it's not untold that as technology increases in some industries, the need for human resources can shrink, but as the role of technology applies to the Internet, it is obvious that the economy of Internet driven jobs and Internet infrastructure jobs is still rapidly growing. While the author of the Internet/Middleman article seems to think that society is already at a point where the technology is replacing webmaster roles and web developer roles, I think he is either being misleading, or generalizing on the whole of the Internet that which may really only apply to his unique platform goals, as the author is the creator of Drupal .

Sid can see where this author's theory is coming from, but Sid sees this advance of web authoringtechnology as diversifying the roles of a webmaster, rather thanreplacing him.  Drupal is a framework, often referred to as a CMS, for creating, administrating, and scripting a website or website application.  Often a CMSwill have a templating system, allowing designers to enhance anddiversify the look of the engine driving the website, but the corefunctionality remains the same across a wide spectrum of industryspecific websites. The goal is to allow a website or web application toscale to meet the needs of the owner, be it a company's shopping cart,a personal blog feature, or an organization's subscription application.This scaling is made easier for the web developer by utilizing aframework that can harness a common functionality between thetechnical needs of all these different applications. Often this isaccomplished by crafting modules, or scripts that plug into the coreframework. If you've read this paragraph and have no idea what I'mtalking about, that just proves the misdirection of the Drupal article,which tries to argue that you don't need us webmaster guys (or girls)to create and manage all this stuff. Laughable? Maybe. Or maybe not. 

Sid's take is that a CMSactually helps a common audience to understand the different roles thata web designer, a web developer, and a webmaster would have. And let'sbe honest, the rise in popularity and adoption of some bad-ass CMS,has made the webmaster's job easier, and also given the webmaster moreopportunity to take on additional work. However, with more CMSfunctionality becoming a part of the free hosted blogs, like Bloggerand Wordpress, maybe there is some truth in the Drupal article'sanalysis. 

The idea of whether the new technologies of the Internet are replacingthe middleman yet again, this time by removing the webmaster, is anintriguing one.  In some instances, the common user can harness thepower of web applications without the need for a specialized codemonkey, but to what extent do they have control? Really, they only havecontrol over what the framework has allowed for them.  Depending onyour marketing plan, and how much the need to scale your website or webapplication, many small businesses, artists, and groups can likely getalong well these days with the available web app resources,  Want acalendar? Plug this in. Want a Buy Now button? Plug this in (we'll justtake a small fee).  Want to podcast? Plug this in (you're stuck withour branding, though). So now you can truly do all of your website administration for yourself, instead of hiring that expensive webmaster. But wait, if you're doing all this yourself, haven't you just replaced that expensive webmaster with a cheap intern?  So now you're the webmaster, baby. Do you like it? Do you?

Additionally, a bigger business, or even just amore focused and driven business, is going to need to develop an Internet Strategy thatincludes a skilled web developer and/or a knowledgeable webmaster if they are not one and the same.  At thevery least, these two roles are crucial if you expect to achieve trueresults from your website.  The website has to be developed to your specs to deliver the particular results that you need. And once it's live, you need someone to keep on top of that content, or you'll go nowhere.  If you're really going to go for it, though,you should get a web designer too. There's nothing that can beat agood, original design.