On Medium • Hacker News Board

Re: On Medium

#51

Post by StavrosK » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 12:26 PM UTC

brianmcc wrote: post #49

StavrosK wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is completely off topic, but where did this "I am yet" nonsense spawn from? It's completely wrong, since you don't say "I amn't seen it yet", you say "I haven't seen it yet", therefore "I have yet to see it". Is it one of those things that people get wrong to sound more educated, like overusing "whom"?

Interesting question - having always used the expression "I'm yet to do XXX" I didn't even realise how odd it might look to those unfamiliar with it. It's pretty standard English IMO, certain nothing I'd consider affectatious the way the use of whom absolutely can be. Some discussion here: http://www.englishforums.com/English/Versus/djxxm/post.htm including "I am yet to..." and "I have yet to..." express exactly the…

Hmm, that's interesting, thanks for the link. "I am yet" looks completely foreign to me, and it doesn't help that I haven't managed to find any definitive citation on the matter. However, it does appear from a cursory search that you are right, and the two have slightly different meanings.

Re: On Medium

#52

Post by codva » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 12:43 PM UTC

raymondduke wrote: post #8

jmduke wrote: post #6

I get the feeling that a lot of people on this site dislike Medium, either consciously or unconsciously. I think part of it is the fact that it separates content from its creators; I think part of it is that it sprung up the same time as Svbtle, and grew conspicuously ubiquitous whereas Svbtle has remained pretty confined to the tech sphere. The underlying value proposition by any sort of blogging engine (Posthaven,…

I like your comment, and your last name. I have an Uncle named Jim. This isn't him, is it? That would be quite the coincidence. --- I think the next best blogging platform will be one that does what WordPress used to do. I have my eyes on Ghost, which claims to be a minimalistic blogging system that you have full control over. It's interesting you mention a linking service. I am actually working somewhat of a linking…

I dropped Wordpress in favor of http://anchorcms.com earlier this year. It's a little raw, not even to 1.0 yet, but quite functional and very lightweight.

Re: On Medium

#53

Post by grrrando » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 1:27 PM UTC

I publish on Medium and parse my author RSS feed for display on my website. See it here, at the bottom: http://grrrando.com/

I think Medium is great. As is mentioned in the article, the editor is fantastic in its minimalism.

A key difference between myself and the author of this post is that I have no interest in creating or maintaining a blog (proper) of my own; I just want to write. I've wanted to write for a while, too, but the roadblock of setting something up and getting it looking decent prevented me from moving forward. For a while I thought Tumblr had been what I was looking for but text-based posts become utterly lost in the stream of naked ladies and pixel art (or is that just me?).

Stats wise, it's interesting to hear what an "Editor's Choice" pick on Medium can result in. I've got several posts on Medium that have 100 or fewer reads and they were posted to correct "collections". Which shows that Medium is not the place to build up an audience that you don't already have. Lacking the ability to "follow" an author – on-site at least, RSS is a non-advertised option – shows that Medium is more oriented towards "real time" (news cycle) longform than being a platform for authorship (for everyone besides maybe @ev and a handful of SV folks that always get featured).

My most popular article was posted about two weeks ago and has had around 2,000 reads. This isn't due to any Medium feature, though - just good old retweets and viral spreading. It was a satire listicle - prime viral material. Probably not what Medium was made for. Getting all of those reads, though, made me wonder exactly where all the traffic was coming from. I wish Medium had more in-depth analytics for this.

Re: On Medium

#54

Post by dclowd9901 » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 2:18 PM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #45

dclowd9901 wrote: post #27

More bullshit SV circle jerking. I wonder if anyone's working on how to make public schools better, or a way to keep politicians more accountable, or a way to help close the wage gap, or... I came here to change the world. And I feel like all I see are nerds blowing each other about The next minimalist uber for twitter.

> I came here to change the world. Genuinely interested: what do you mean by "here"? HN, programming, life?

Silicon Valley. I grew up dreaming about Livermore Labs, Xerox PARC, Hewlett Packard (in its day), Apple. Now everything is in the city, and each start up as vapid and pointless as the last.

Re: On Medium

#55

Post by raymondduke » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 2:29 PM UTC

dclowd9901 wrote: post #54

probably_wrong wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I came here to change the world. Genuinely interested: what do you mean by "here"? HN, programming, life?

Silicon Valley. I grew up dreaming about Livermore Labs, Xerox PARC, Hewlett Packard (in its day), Apple. Now everything is in the city, and each start up as vapid and pointless as the last.

If you want to change the world, change yourself. You should never rely on others to change in the ways you'd like them to.

Re: On Medium

#56

Post by raymondduke » Mon, Jul 01, 2013, 2:37 PM UTC

kristianp wrote: post #44

I can't see any mention here, but does Medium pay their authors for the content? Or is the pertinent question, how well does it pay compared to other article sites?

Medium does not pay a majority of their authors, however, I've heard that they pay some "big names" to help them gain traffic.

So unless you are a well known blogger/journalist, don't expect a check.

Re: On Medium

#57

Post by msutherl » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 2:04 AM UTC

dclowd9901 wrote: post #54

probably_wrong wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I came here to change the world. Genuinely interested: what do you mean by "here"? HN, programming, life?

Silicon Valley. I grew up dreaming about Livermore Labs, Xerox PARC, Hewlett Packard (in its day), Apple. Now everything is in the city, and each start up as vapid and pointless as the last.

That kind of innovation (a) is difficult and (b) requires precisely configured conditions. Unfortunately the lesson that corporations learned from the golden age of these labs was that though they produced amazing things, they didn't provide an adequate return on the investment. Now that everybody has learned that lesson, there are not many such labs left and the ones that are thriving operate much like either product incubators (Microsoft) or agencies (PARC).

Another problem is that there are not many properly educated people to establish and run labs like this thanks to our education system falling apart. But you won't hear anybody talking about that. Things will just get worse and worse.

Re: On Medium

#58

Post by msutherl » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 2:07 AM UTC

raymondduke wrote: post #55

dclowd9901 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silicon Valley. I grew up dreaming about Livermore Labs, Xerox PARC, Hewlett Packard (in its day), Apple. Now everything is in the city, and each start up as vapid and pointless as the last.

If you want to change the world, change yourself. You should never rely on others to change in the ways you'd like them to.

You should definitely never rely on others to change, but you can engage in a dialogue with the public through writing and speaking, which has the potential to change others.

Re: On Medium

#59

Post by kristianp » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 2:48 AM UTC

raymondduke wrote: post #56

kristianp wrote: post #44

I can't see any mention here, but does Medium pay their authors for the content? Or is the pertinent question, how well does it pay compared to other article sites?

Medium does not pay a majority of their authors, however, I've heard that they pay some "big names" to help them gain traffic. So unless you are a well known blogger/journalist, don't expect a check.

So sites like Medium are effectively driving down the pay of most authors (except some stars) by competing with other sites that pay for content. Bad news for authors.