“HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work” • Hacker News Board

Re: “HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work”

#101

Post by tonystubblebine » Tue, Mar 12, 2019, 11:33 PM UTC

smooke wrote: post #98

tonystubblebine wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the same dynamic but credit the exact reverse. Hacker Noon accumulated followers by aggregating articles that were already published on Medium. They were publishing 30 articles a day without adding any editorial value. That got the flywheel going where since they were a big publication, authors would submit directly to them. But all they did was aggregate Medium users and authors without adding any additional v…

FYI - Tony is medium advisor. Unsure why he is making it his job to make uninformed comments like this. This is David from Hackernoon, letting you know that without the use of Medium at my last job, I recruited, edited and published 400+ contributing writers with the use of Wordpress. When I started there, the company started with no brand, 5 employees and barely any seed money. When I left, it had 120 employees, $60…

I'm speaking as a publisher on medium. You know that David.

Re: “HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work”

#102

Post by braythwayt » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 1:29 AM UTC

Freak_NL wrote: post #70

lukewrites wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, Medium, let's not make it official.

When someone wants to make it official , I expect them to want to marry, sue, hire, or fuck me. None of these is what I expect to be offered when reading a blog. I don't know why the wording of that message irritates me so much, but I can't imagine many people would appreciate it.

Way OT, but there's also a referee who does MMA who after giving the fighters their formal instructions, always says, "Now touch gloves and let's make it official."

Re: “HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work”

#103

Post by tonystubblebine » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 3:24 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #93

tonystubblebine wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been working to help Medium with this. They get journalism and have an excellent internal team run by the former EIC at Time. But they don't get expert publications, i.e. pubs run by subject matter experts. I'd put together a self-improvement publication, Better Humans, based on what I'd learned working at O'Reilly during the heyday of O'Reilly books. Those were books for programmers written by programmers and e…

Don't those publications still have the problem that people (e.g. here on HN, where it's the only thing visible) just see a "medium.com" domain, and not an identity that can stand out? Or are those publications getting exceptions from the "we don't do custom domains anymore" crap medium pulled a while ago? The domain you publish on is a strong signal. Not having your own both means your beholden to the platform your…

Isn't a big part of the reputation of the medium.com domain here on HN the fault of the HN community? Why are we posting and upvoting so many crummy articles?

I'm pretty sure custom domains aren't coming back. We're on a custom domain and I'm dying to get rid of it because I think it makes it look like Better Humans is a content marketing initiative for Coach.me (domain is betterhumans.coach.me).

However, I would like if Medium moved faster to kick off pubs that were pushing high volumes of articles without a corresponding level of quality. It probably looks like I'm bickering with the Hacker Noon publisher in other parts of these comments--and that's because I am. I think the way he publishes is across the board bad: it's a waste of his reader's time, it's a waste of his own time (he has the initiative to do so much more with his life), and it drains eyeballs and reputation from other Medium articles, which then has an effect on both my own interest of trying to deliver great articles to people and of making money.

There's an addition by subtraction opportunity for Medium where they push off the low-quality high-traffic pubs and then the .medium.com domain starts to look like a signal of quality in places like HN and Reddit.

Re: “HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work”

#104

Post by yangustin » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 4:39 AM UTC

I actually don't understand the big fuss. Hackernoon was a publication on Medium. They asked writers for opt-in to republish content. Some writers were confused. Medium sent an email clarifying writers right. Writers can decide whether to give consent or not - all good.

The only problem I have is with the language Medium used: "moving content." If Medium is indeed the platform, publications should NOT have the ability to "move" content. They can delete their publication, but articles should remain on Medium and all existing links should redirect to the article. I believe this is the case, which means the language is deceptive.

If this is NOT the case, then the product has a big problem.

Re: “HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work”

#105

Post by smooke » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:44 AM UTC

tonystubblebine wrote: post #103

detaro wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't those publications still have the problem that people (e.g. here on HN, where it's the only thing visible) just see a "medium.com" domain, and not an identity that can stand out? Or are those publications getting exceptions from the "we don't do custom domains anymore" crap medium pulled a while ago? The domain you publish on is a strong signal. Not having your own both means your beholden to the platform your…

Isn't a big part of the reputation of the medium.com domain here on HN the fault of the HN community? Why are we posting and upvoting so many crummy articles? I'm pretty sure custom domains aren't coming back. We're on a custom domain and I'm dying to get rid of it because I think it makes it look like Better Humans is a content marketing initiative for Coach.me (domain is betterhumans.coach.me). However, I would lik…

What do you know about the way we publish? David from Hacker Noon here --- Most stories on Hacker Noon are not published by me, they are published by one of these four other editors https://hackernoon.com/meet-the-new-hacker-noon-editors-b375...

Every Hacker Noon story is reviewed by editor. On sites where anyone can publish, I'd guess less than 10% of stories are reviewed by an editor... but who knows?

I heard 7 of the 50 most clapped stories in 2018 are on hackernoon.com https://twitter.com/search?q=most%20clapped%20hackernoon&src... but I don't trust claps these days b/c of the evidence I've seen showing how clap counts display differently for different site visitors. If I go to hackernoon.com right now, "Blockchain Empowering Women Around the World" displays as zero claps on the hackernoon.com homepage, but I am following the author and when I click on the story many people have clapped it... https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-empowering-women-around-th... But if claps are to be trusted as a measure of quality, Hacker Noon outperforms the vast majority Medium posts: https://schleiss.io/2018/07/28/average-hackernoon-claps/

BTW, greatly appreciate the kind words about doing more initiative with my life! I thought a top 5k site in the world was cool, but it is small potatoes when you're neighbors are making twice baked. As the kids say, "CHEEEEEEESE"

Re: “HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work”

#106

Post by jondubois » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 8:05 AM UTC

tonystubblebine wrote: post #101

smooke wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI - Tony is medium advisor. Unsure why he is making it his job to make uninformed comments like this. This is David from Hackernoon, letting you know that without the use of Medium at my last job, I recruited, edited and published 400+ contributing writers with the use of Wordpress. When I started there, the company started with no brand, 5 employees and barely any seed money. When I left, it had 120 employees, $60…

I'm speaking as a publisher on medium. You know that David.

It's true that initally, Hacker Noon was just picking articles that were already published. My point still stands though that this added a lot of value for me as a content producer because those same articles didn't get much attention before they were included in Hacker Noon.

Then I started publishing straight to Hacker Noon because I knew that my article would for sure at least get a couple of thousand reads no matter what; and the most useful articles ended up getting almost 100K reads (highly trageted too; almost all software developers). I don't think it could have happened without Hacker Noon.

As an open source developer who spent thousands of hours working on a project without making profit from it, I can attest that in the current system, it does not matter who does the actual work. It's who can capitalize on that work who takes the profit. I'm pretty sure that Medium has profited from hundreds of open source projects as well. There is no point to try to moralize this.

Re: “HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work”

#107

Post by mercer » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 2:27 PM UTC

smooke wrote: post #100

tonystubblebine wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMO, you've opened yourself up to lawsuits from all of your investors by hiding material information about your risks. If you launch a new site with fewer than 8M page views, your investors should ask why. And if the answer is that you weren't able to port your back catalog to your new site because you don't have rights to those articles, your investors should ask if you knew this ahead of time. And if you did, they…

Hey Tony for the equity crowdfunding campaign we were vetted by 3rd party accountants and 3rd party lawyers. We published hundreds of pages of information will full financials and risks. You can find it here: https://www.startengine.com/hackernoon Interesting that you think I raise money dishonestly, while Equity Crowdfunding is the only form of funding that publicly discloses all kinds of information for EVERYONE, n…

I gotta say this entire HN thread leaves me with a negative impression of both 'David from Hacker Noon' and 'Tony from Medium'. More the latter than the former, but honestly I can't tell.

Mostly I'm left thinking the 'drama' in here is entirely befitting the general quality of both properties. I generally find Medium and Hacker Noon links to be somewhat underwhelming whenever they're posted to this here HN.

Re: “HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work”

#108

Post by tonystubblebine » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

smooke wrote: post #105

tonystubblebine wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't a big part of the reputation of the medium.com domain here on HN the fault of the HN community? Why are we posting and upvoting so many crummy articles? I'm pretty sure custom domains aren't coming back. We're on a custom domain and I'm dying to get rid of it because I think it makes it look like Better Humans is a content marketing initiative for Coach.me (domain is betterhumans.coach.me). However, I would lik…

What do you know about the way we publish? David from Hacker Noon here --- Most stories on Hacker Noon are not published by me, they are published by one of these four other editors https://hackernoon.com/meet-the-new-hacker-noon-editors-b375... Every Hacker Noon story is reviewed by editor. On sites where anyone can publish, I'd guess less than 10% of stories are reviewed by an editor... but who knows? I heard 7 of…

That Schleiss article makes exactly the point I'm trying to make to you. For a publication of your size 375 claps is a dud (that article is using data from when Medium's algorithm's would have been working in your favor). 75% of your articles are completely failing to get traction.

The job your editors should be doing is quality control. They should be filtering what you publish way down. And your job as the publisher should be to set guidelines for quality. None of that is happening and as a result, you're putting a constant stream of low quality in front of people. What's so great about being a top 5K site if you the impact is wasting people's time?

As comparison, I looked at the last 50 articles we published and only found 2 that didn't get 375 claps. Those were duds and we tried to learn lessons from them.

Re: “HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work”

#109

Post by smooke » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 7:34 PM UTC

PascLeRasc wrote: post #68

JeremyBanks wrote: post #39

HackerNoon has consistently published bad-faith clickbait garbage and slander. Assume that their description here is similarly misleading.

I agree. Just last week on HN(ews) someone asked what the most popular Medium blog was and I was about to say HackerNoon just from seeing it everywhere, but when I went to their site it was all low-quality articles about putting your Tesla on the blockchain.

Hey PascLeRasc, we're doing some work to improve quality, but it is a tough nut to crack. It starts with more editors. We onboarded 4 so far this year https://hackernoon.com/meet-the-new-hacker-noon-editors-b375... We're working on an activity feed of some form in 2.0, showing you when an editor has opened, edited, then published your story, and we’ll continue to build on that with feedback from the community. We've also been curating our favorites here https://hackernoon.com/editors-top-tech-stories/home

Re: “HackerNoon is leaving Medium, but also trying to take rights for people's work”

#110

Post by smooke » Wed, Mar 13, 2019, 7:41 PM UTC

browniefed wrote: post #24

snazz wrote: post #15

Interesting. I’m hoping that most contributors will accept licensing their content to the new website, because decentralization is good. The Medium email seemed a little disingenuous in how it called HackerNoon a “container”.

Technically that is all publications are. A container of posts. HackerNoon invited people to their publication to "grow a community" when in fact it's pretty much been profiting off free content with 0 hosting costs and a $70 one-time DNS hookup to medium.

David from Hackernoon here. We've actually been using Medium as our content management system for so long there was no fee at all. They wanted to cover the fee to recruit more publications. While we haven't paid for hosting, it has come at a tremendous cost (to name a few: medium has our reader data, our subscribers email addresses, and runs many pop up create an account ads that very much hurt our bounce rate). Tradeoff was our own little version of this https://twitter.com/JulienVallini/status/1060177021953806342 Although we also wont be paying for hosting for the next year or so b/c we got a grant from GCP https://hackernoon.com/google-cloud-platform-hacker-noon-2ba... But ultimately, high traffic sites need to be smart about hosting fees, and I think our upcoming setup will be a good balance between calling the app and surfacing content from CDN. Personally, I don't think domains and people can be classified as containers, but word choice is an art and I certainly feel dehumanized by that one.