It ultimately depends on the site's audience really, but I think web designes/developers are a bit more aware of usability/user experience than they used to be. Because of this I believe websites seem to be simpler than they used to... Nowadays lot of emphasis is put on how a user navigates through the site and how they reach the content they were after. This means making it simpler for them do to so, less bumps on the road, less graphics etc.

What do you mean by simple? I've asked before on this forum, does simple equate to minimalist, and to what degree? Craig's List is simple but very crowded with an over-abundance of places for you to go -- little opposite than the LinkedIn concept of "easy as 1, 2, 3".

You have to ask yourself two questions: What does my audience want and what do I want do I want my audience to want? Your site can be whatever you want it to be as long as it is intuitive. Most typical website can answer the above two questions in three actions or less (high-level actionable elements). You shouldn't limit yourself to three actionable items, but you should have a core focus and base for your hierarchy.

Utilizing the DOM has really opened the door for designers in past several years with regard to offering audiences a multitude of options in a clean, simplistic, and un-cluttered fashion.

when there's textual information that needs to be read, minimalism will always be a good idea for sure.

The question is determining in the web space, what is minimalism?

The standard definition across the board is something to the effect of "a style in which elements are presented in the simplest possible form"

My question is how do we define "elements".

Compare: http://nytimes.com/ with http://alistapart.com/

Both sites have little excess visual graphics -- both clean and ensure the article content is front-and-center.

Are elemnts the text, the boxes of text, the artistic visual frame, the logo, the footer; is it everything? What would make the two sites more minimalist? Two links, "Read articles" and "Everything other than reading articles"? Those two questions with no visual branding, no excess elements -- is that true minimalism? Both sites has very little excess with regard to visual elements present only for aesthetics. Wouldn't true minimalism be a logo mark on a page with links to the major sections of the site? Why diplay article heads and teasers? Why display the filter of article topics? Why display photos to compliment articles we havn't read yet? If we are thinking like minimalist!

If your answer is to find a balance -- then is that no longer true minimalism? Can a site like NYTimes.com ever be truly minimalist? Isn't thier excess of content and their inability to break that content down in fewer than three dozen sections defeat the purpose? While the content is better organized by breaking up 'World news' and 'US news' or 'Business news' and 'Arts and Entertainment', doesnt this now clutter that which is just 'news'. Wouldn't a truely minimalist news site only have 'news'? -- isnt that the simplist possible form?

I am not saying one way or anther -- just really curious how the web can even define minimalism -- seems almost impossible. Minimalism on the web is almost unproductive. This is true minimalism, but it does nothing.

I think the term "minimalist" in web design is normally applied to presentation and not content.

I agree with your point but have worked with some companies that make me disagree to an extent.

This is a site that makes me cry as a designer, firehouse.com. It is minimalist with respect to presentation over content. However, it is the inability of the staff to organize their content in a meaningful and coherent manner that I believe makes this a poor case for minimalism. The site is so unorganized and cluttered that it is the content that adds to its unminimalist style.

A question to the group:
Does anyone have a checklist of sorts that a site could be run against to end the question of "is this or is this not minimalist"?
The only reason I ask is becuase "minimalism" seems like a rather dificult thing to pin-point with regard to web design.