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Medium is a poor choice for blogging

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Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#371

Post by JDiculous »

I stopped using Medium when they removed the ability to see a list of just your articles, mixing your comments into the list (as though every comment you write at the bottom of an article is just as significant as an article you wrote, what a stupid idea though it looks like they've realized that and reverted back). Also I never liked how they don't let you nest bullet points.

Moved to markdown and and self-hosting and haven't looked back since. Much prefer the freedom of owning my own files and not being married to any platform.

However I do miss the convenience of just being able to post online without needing to compile everything on my laptop with a static file generator and pushing to GitHub, so maybe I'll switch to Wordpress or something later if I take writing more seriously.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#372

Post by SilverSlash »

I tried to port an article from my personal blog to medium once. The experience was abysmal. They don't render Markdown, there is no easy way of adding code sections, etc.

I had never used Medium until then and will probably never use it again but I still gotta ask. Why are we stuck with this awful platform, and why do they still not have markdown/code support?

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#373

Post by blaze33 »

Not sure the issue is Medium being a poor tool compared to other ways of blogging...

The issue I see is one of ownership:

You think you "use" Medium to publish your content, you call that blogging. But Medium own the domain and the tools: you'll never exploit the owner using the tools they offered you. In the end, it's medium that really exploits you (ie. the content you freely gave). And they'll use your content in the way they want.

Your content is just a hook they'll use to attract readers and push them to those obnoxious pop-ups, banners, buttons, etc. Well you read the article.

Personally I own my domain. I use open source tools (ghost & custom made web apps). It serves me well. I own my place and have the freedom to grow it as I'd like.

Thanks for reading, take care :)

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#375

Post by cbar_tx »

over a year ago, the rapid fire, almost daily updates to their android app had given me the suspicions that their operating expenses would be too much to remain humble for long, then came the notifications and social media posts inviting me to come read the paywall articles. I'm not against paying for access with subscription, as I have a few, as well as a healthy list of creators on Patreon but I feel it's kinda like YouTube profiting massively from user generated content. I know they aren't in it for fun, just saying it's been obvious for a while now

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#376

Post by shawn »

eropple wrote: post #254
sctb wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! All: please email us when you see stuff like this. We read emails.

To amplify: they really do. I've got my beefs with HN moderation on occasion, but neither 'dang nor 'sctb have ever failed to respond to an email with a response, and a thoughtful one if it's a topic that needs one.

This is not correct. I have sent many which have gone unanswered. I can show them if you'd like.

Dan answers if he likes you. It's as simple as that. If he doesn't, he either filters your emails and never sees them, or refuses to answer them.

You are one data point. Please don't extrapolate it to those of us who have tried for months to get answers to specific questions.

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#378

Post by ericmjalbert »

onemoresoop wrote: post #95
marpstar wrote: post #64

I'm glad the author mentioned the thing that I dislike most about Medium: the "share" tooltip that appears any time you highlight anything in the article. I realize that they consider this a value prop (and it certainly hasn't hurt their ability to grow) but for those of us who highlight text as we read, it's incredibly annoying.

Same here, highlighting the text helps me keep track of the paragraph i'm reading and I was annoyed by this feature as well. On a related note, I've been looking for a plugin that highlights lines/paragraphs of text and is controlled by the cursor keys up/down (for desktop viewing only) but haven't been able to find such a thing yet. I keep on hoping that one day somebody would come up with such a thing.

I think Vimium [0] would allow you to highlight lines with hjkl keys. They have a "Visual Select" mode that'll highlight lines as if it were in VI [1].

[0] Google Chrome Extension: https://github.com/philc/vimium

[1] https://github.com/philc/vimium/wiki/Visual-Mode

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#379

Post by tpaschalis »

akamaozu wrote: post #368
tpaschalis wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, and since everybody seems to post their personal blogs for critique, shameless plug in adding a link to my own, which I think gets the minimalism aesthetic sooomewhat right. It still needs some more slimming down, and small aesthetic changes would be welcome, but here it goes. [1] https://tpaschalis.github.io/

Love your post about what good software is. Currently trawling your archive

Thanks for the good words, stranger!

I'm a terrible writer, but, there's only one way to get better! I really, really like your own blog, too :)

Re: Medium is a poor choice for blogging

#380

Post by spurgu »

wlesieutre wrote: post #148
coldtea wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's 2018, and there are a gazillion ways to get yourself in control of your stuff. But zero ways to get people to read it. I only read his post because it's on HN. And I read Medium stuff regularly on Medium. The chances of most people discovering some random blog? Not so much. Whereas Medium has concentrated eyeballs and knows their preferences to serve them stuff that's close to their tastes...

Do many people browse Medium like this? I read a decent number of posts there, but only because someone sends me a link or shared it on another platform.

All publicity is good publicity, I just typed in "medium.com" in my browser.
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