Websites should fail like escalators, not elevators. If your JS isn't working properly, the site should default to just dumping the text. I'll be OK dealing with the consequences of bad formatting.
> I like this analogy and will be stealing it for future use.
Heh, I stole it from someone on here. I purposely built my site to work with minimal unnecessary components (JS, CSS, etc), and that makes it "just work" with things like Lynx. As it turns out, making sites simple also make them more compatible!
It sort of ignores the fact that escalators also fail by ripping people apart, maiming or killing them. I'll take the occasional broken back button and crappy contrast.
An escalator shredding someone is not a structural failure. Anyway, it wasn't meant all that seriously - just that a quip about failure modes has failed to consider the failure modes.
/rant