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Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

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Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#131

Post by wasyl »

jaclaz wrote: post #89

What I always wondered about is why the (good) people that publish free content on Medium actually publish on Medium. I mean, talking of technical article/tutorials, it is not like nowadays (and in the last - say - 10 years) there are not other ways (personal site/blog or if the issue is expected huge traffic other free hosting sites, like - still say - github). What is the perceived "added value" by Medium (in case…

I'd say visibility and it's super easy to start. Even if you want a simple github-hosted static blog, there's just a lot more to do than just opening a website and writing in simple markdown

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#132

Post by timvdalen »

ta988 wrote: post #68
young_unixer wrote: post #40

Medium, Twitter and other "dark pattern" companies are on my blacklist: I don't open any link that point to them. Life is slightly better this way.

The only problem with medium is that sometimes you don't know you are redirected to medium because of a custom domain...

On the other hand, there's no gatekeeping on custom domains, right?

I have a custom Medium domain from back in the day when you could get them, and it doesn't suffer from any of the usability problems and dark patterns of the actual medium.com (though I should probably move away from it anyway).

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#133

Post by andybak »

blunte wrote: post #62
andybak wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you genuinely arguing that the world would be a better place if there were only official docs and no tutorials? You must have a very different experience to me. I'd say the value is about 70-30% in favour of unofficial tutorials for the tech topics I've learned over the years.

But it is getting increasingly more time consuming to sift through the either outdated and misleading guides or the incomplete, inaccurate, or simply bad ones to get to a useful one. Even StackOverflow is reaching the point of net-negative value; far too many of its questions and answers are outdated, but the nature of their system means the older (first acceptable) answers tend to be promoted as current answers.

> But it is getting increasingly more time consuming

I'd dispute "increasingly" - twas ever thus to some degree.

Spotting whether a tutorial is still valid is a skill that can be honed and it's part of learning how to learn.

Your argument has some merit but your solution of "let's stop writing tutorials" seems a trifle extreme. Wishing something was better isn't a great argument for it's extinction.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#134

Post by LandR »

x87678r wrote: post #20

Actually can we stop writing tutorials period. When you search for something I always get a bunch of old tutorials by people who are learning something and writing as they learn. If the official docs aren't great, contribute to them.

I write my own blog posts as I learn something, it's a great way to reinforce my learning. Sort of, If I can write it down in such a way that I can explain it, then I'm more confident I actually understand it. I then look at it and think what would someone who doesn't know any of this ask if they read this or if I was explaining it to them. Sometimes I don't know the answer, so I have to go off and research to allow me to fill in those knowledge gaps.

I find this really helps me.

I just don't publish the bloody thing to the internet! Because I know it would just be clutter when people are looking for an actual experts explanation of the thing.

It also means I have quite comprehensive notes I can go back to, again private though.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#136

Post by CarelessExpert »

nuker wrote: post #61
tacker2000 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yea but that cant be the real solution.

Its the only solution for 2020 web. Plus, of course, vpn and adblocker.

The only solution? So... in 2020 the only place to publish long-form content is Medium?

Well... TIL.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#137

Post by SilasX »

dhimes wrote: post #127
SilasX wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, but I have no problem with people sharing useful knowledge as personal advertising, so long as it's actually useful and not otherwise scummy (e.g. the Medium UX).

But you're not ok with somebody selling you their useful knowledge?

I'm okay with that too, I was just replying to the annoyed attitude toward people who market themselves with useful articles.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#138

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

darksaints wrote: post #126
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #88

I write everything initially on my own site[0]. I will often (but not always) mirror the article on Medium[1]. I'll often post links, here, to the Medium articles, because I have had my site get the "hug of death" a few times. In the old days, that was cool (The term "slashdotted" came from that). These days, it doesn't really mean much; except that the server goes down. I don't get any real advantage from it. I thin…

You should try a static site generator, and then get your site hosted via CDN. No hug of death and extremely fast. It will take you an afternoon or so to figure out how things work if you haven't done it before, but it is time well spent.

The issue is with transferring older material to the site. Lot more than an afternoon, there..

I agree, though. Static site generators are nice. I will probably look at doing one, sooner or later.

My issue is that I like to have a fairly "branded" experience, so I want to control all kinds of stuff. I'm not usually one to leave "standard" templates in place, without peeing on them.

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#139

Post by armoredkitten »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #100
dplgk wrote: post #17

I find most Medium tech articles to be written poorly or outdated or written by juniors. They seem to be written by people that want to write an article just to write and article.

Someone told me that "It's called Medium because the articles are neither rare, nor well-done." That seems accurate in my experience.

That quote is definitely not original, and I believe was originally applied to TV (i.e., TV as a medium, singular form of media). (See the origins here: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/07/24/tv/)

I mean, not knocking who told you that at all, I think it's funny that they applied it to Medium the website. Just a little tidbit of info about the quote's origins, in case you weren't aware!

Re: Ask HN: Please stop writing tutorials/tech articles on Medium

#140

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

ghaff wrote: post #110
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #88

I write everything initially on my own site[0]. I will often (but not always) mirror the article on Medium[1]. I'll often post links, here, to the Medium articles, because I have had my site get the "hug of death" a few times. In the old days, that was cool (The term "slashdotted" came from that). These days, it doesn't really mean much; except that the server goes down. I don't get any real advantage from it. I thin…

I used to mirror some of my more general interest stuff on Medium. I actually found the formatting pretty nice and figured there was 1.) Some discoverability and 2.) Some people, possibly out of ignorance, associate/associated Medium with more credibility than a random personal blog. I do use Blogger, so load isn't actually an issue. Since the paywall became increasingly obtrusive I stopped mirroring and just use my…

I suspect that my site may be more robust, in the future. It's hosted on a server that a friend of mine runs, and he moved to a better LiquidWeb server.
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