Ending our Medium integration • Hacker News Board

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#281

Post by gamblor956 » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 7:50 PM UTC

potta_coffee wrote: post #259

gamblor956 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spam killed forums. Facebook took since it wasn't plagued with spam.

Facebook content is now such low-quality that it might as well be spam (my opinion). Also, pointless, toxic conversations. It seems to bring out the worst in people. I know some people like it for keeping in touch. I refuse to use it anymore, not worth it for me.

I find Facebook to be quite useful, and the content to be of moderately high quality for the type of content it is intended for: social updates from friends and family.

The conversations on FB range from informative to toxic, and depend, like the internet forums of old, on the moderators. As FB does not actively moderate discussions, toxic conversations are the fault of the participants and the moderators, not on FB.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#282

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 7:52 PM UTC

MarsAscendant wrote: post #246

brightball wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for one of those fully bootstrapped successful companies now and it really is fantastic how we can have real business conversations around ecosystem improvement that don’t revolve around money. Money is good, but not having everything dictated by it is good for the mission. EDIT: Sure there's still a financial incentive there but it's framed more in the "we need to turn a profit so that we can afford to contin…

Is there still a concern about the profit? I'm assuming you're working for a for-profit company, where one of the goals – if not the goal, ultimately – is to make cash. (I don't mean to insinuate any sharply-materialistic outlook on your company: I sincerely don't know how a company thinks about money.)

[deleted]

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#283

Post by z3t4 » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

burger_moon wrote: post #94

smacktoward wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. It's barely acceptable on desktop, but on a mobile device it's awful. All the links and buttons are tiny , and they're all so crowded together I frequently end up doing dumb things like tapping "flag" when I meant to tap "discuss." With just a little bit of work HN's UI could be so much better.

Seriously I get that they want the 'shit plain look to scare off normal people' schtick but it's also terrible for accessibility. For being a company that beats the inclusive and equality drum they seem to go out of their way to make it impossible for people who don't have incredible dexterity or eyesight to use this site. I love the simple layout but make it accessible to everyone.

try opera mobile browser. it has a nice zoom feature where the text will always word wrap to fit on the screen!

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#284

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 7:53 PM UTC

thefz wrote: post #17

kuhhk wrote: post #4

Personally, I was excited by Medium all those years ago. Now I think twice before clicking a medium.com link. I really hate the obnoxious UI and usually close the tab before reading the article. Anyone else feel this way?

While some interesting and insightful articles still exist on the site, the majority feels like someone trying to explain me what they read on Wikipedia this morning.

[deleted]

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#285

Post by balladeer » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 7:55 PM UTC

kuhhk wrote: post #4

Personally, I was excited by Medium all those years ago. Now I think twice before clicking a medium.com link. I really hate the obnoxious UI and usually close the tab before reading the article. Anyone else feel this way?

I have always liked blogs hosted on their own. Different fonts, different background, font size/colours, different layouts et cetera. It feels very personal. Medium felt like an assembly line. It's very bland.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#286

Post by balladeer » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

AJ007 wrote: post #161

PaulHoule wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it looked like a scam right away. Medium tried to act as if it were something a little bit better than the rest of the web and it quickly became something just a little bit worse. Why? If you are running a tiny service you can get together a community of people who are two or three standard deviations better than the mean. If that service grows, it is going to tap a wider pool of lesser talent and the quality o…

Be suspect of any centralized, closed service attempting to replace an open, working, eco-system of decentralized platforms.

To be honest that's the biggest reason I have never really rooted for Signal. Even though it's like really beta, I would rather invest my hope and efforts in Matrix/Riot kind of setup.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#287

Post by ako » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 7:57 PM UTC

kuhhk wrote: post #4

Personally, I was excited by Medium all those years ago. Now I think twice before clicking a medium.com link. I really hate the obnoxious UI and usually close the tab before reading the article. Anyone else feel this way?

No, i read most articles through Pocket. Just save the link to pocket, and read it popup and adfree in the pocket app.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#288

Post by arielm » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 7:59 PM UTC

zrobotics wrote: post #261

MarsAscendant wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there still a concern about the profit? I'm assuming you're working for a for-profit company, where one of the goals – if not the goal, ultimately – is to make cash. (I don't mean to insinuate any sharply-materialistic outlook on your company: I sincerely don't know how a company thinks about money.)

That will always be a concern, even for a nonprofit. You need to keep the lights on, and people need to be paid. However, the trouble with VC funding is the expectation of scale. A VC won't be happy with a small organization that makes enough to pay its employees and sustain a small amount of growth. Unfortunately, that business requires large successes. So the founders and the investors can easily have very differen…

I disagree with this view completely.

Companies like MailChimp and Atlassian are great examples of bootstrapped companies that became very successful. There are more.

Money is great to have at any stage of a company, and bootstrapped companies prefer to trade stability and time for the freedom of not having money (and those who only focus on it) control decisions.

You can build a great company with and without investment, but you can fail with either just as well.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#289

Post by DpdC » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 8:01 PM UTC

doublepg23 wrote: post #178

smacktoward wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. It's barely acceptable on desktop, but on a mobile device it's awful. All the links and buttons are tiny , and they're all so crowded together I frequently end up doing dumb things like tapping "flag" when I meant to tap "discuss." With just a little bit of work HN's UI could be so much better.

I use the Materialistic app on Android. Works great.

Totally agree.

Re: Ending our Medium integration

#290

Post by geniium » Wed, Jan 30, 2019, 8:02 PM UTC

kuhhk wrote: post #4

Personally, I was excited by Medium all those years ago. Now I think twice before clicking a medium.com link. I really hate the obnoxious UI and usually close the tab before reading the article. Anyone else feel this way?

Exactly the same feeling. Few year back, really like what they built and had fun using their tool.

Since ˜1 year, I have no pleasure to use it and I tend to get away from it.