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Why Medium Sucks

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Re: Why Medium Sucks

#141

Post by tonystubblebine »

tonystubblebine wrote: post #138
gowthamgts12 wrote: post #130

Part of public domain now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_(website)#Criticism_and...

Oh brother. An alternative take on that criticism is that FCC pulled off a huge copyright heist: https://dev.to/ben/i-m-concerned-with-the-move-that-freecode... I'm pretty sure that what FCC calls extortion was actually just the end of a free ride. Based on what I know of the ecosystem and the offer that was made to me as a publisher, I think the content of the Medium's approach would have been along these lines: "Fo…

I see a lot of places where tech people call what Medium did above "pulling the rug" or "bait and switch." I'm always shocked to hear this from tech people.

We know how startups work. A pre-revenue company is by definition going to pivot to a business model or go bankrupt (or often both). I think it's a bad look to act entitled to that pre-revenue period lasting forever. And certainly, it's disingenuous to act surprised.

Then too, if you are an entrepreneur building a partnership with a pre-revenue company, you have to understand that that partnership is not stable. I'd consider it a first principle of business partnerships that both sides need to make money.

So, in the old days when Medium was hemorrhaging cash, that is by definition an unstable partnership. Of course it's going to change.

To me, for the first time ever, Medium is now a stable company to partner with because you basically know what their actual incentives are.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#142

Post by tonystubblebine »

_bxg1 wrote: post #93

My theory is that the aggressive business practices and dark patterns are a sign of desperation in the face of a failing business model. Nobody wants the paywall, so authors don't put posts behind the paywall (most of them don't even blog to make money, they do it for publicity or for fun). You might sympathize with Medium here: they're hosting all this content for free and nobody wants to give them the money to pay…

Reasonable in theory, but in practice subscribers have gone up and that's evident in the payout to authors. Also, in the vacuum of HN & FCC leaving Medium, I had no problem launching a programming pub focused on the subscriber program, finding authors (212 in the first 40 days), and readers (now hitting 25k views/day).

What's sort of lost in all of this discussion is the point of the subscriber program. The point is to higher quality articles to people who care about quality. A programmer's hourly rate is well above three figures, why would you waste your time reading low quality articles? Because sometimes they're the best available. But it doesn't have to be that way.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#143

Post by cftorres »

The author says paywalls are not the problem but as a reader I don't understand why the autors have to ask for those high prices. The articles you can find in Medium are well written but they aren't scientific articles, with a lot of resourses and time invested to find some data. And the way I find those articles are more like a coincidence than a specific search for economic purposes. I think internet is changing abruptly because of an unsustainable ambition, we are turning all interactions into transactions.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#144

Post by TremendousJudge »

CydeWeys wrote: post #38
ctvo wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I may be one of the folks not part of the Medium community. I only visit Medium via direct links (on HN, shared on Twitter or shared directly to me by friends). I can't remember the times I've been on Medium's home page or opened up their app to browse. If those direct links sent me to somewhere else entirely tomorrow I wouldn't care.

If those direct links sent me somewhere else tomorrow I would care, because odds are the alternative would be better. Medium is seriously annoying with its sign-in nags and large amounts of the screen taken up with unnecessary bars. I just want to read an article. Medium is a worse experience than average in that regard.

I use the Web Annoyances Ultralist[0]. Blocks basically everything except the header (non-sticky of course) and the text, which ends up as a nice centered column on a white background.

[0]https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#145

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

TremendousJudge wrote: post #144
CydeWeys wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If those direct links sent me somewhere else tomorrow I would care, because odds are the alternative would be better. Medium is seriously annoying with its sign-in nags and large amounts of the screen taken up with unnecessary bars. I just want to read an article. Medium is a worse experience than average in that regard.

I use the Web Annoyances Ultralist[0]. Blocks basically everything except the header (non-sticky of course) and the text, which ends up as a nice centered column on a white background. [0] https://github.com/yourduskquibbles/webannoyances

really cool thanks. the combination of uBO and NanoDefender is absolutely awesoome but I didn't have this Ultralist as part of my setup yet.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#146

Post by [deleted] »

manjana wrote: post #43

One thing that is really nice thou is the typography they have chosen to set on. Most blogs fail at this imo (to a lesser or ocasionally to a disastrous degree).

[deleted]

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#147

Post by tonystubblebine »

vowelless wrote: post #125

“There are also a few Medium alternatives out there. I personally post my blog to Dev.to (which you might be reading this on right now) as they support the features I need to control my own content. As a product guy, there are definitely some UI changes I would make, but the overall experience is much better than Medium.” Is Dev.to a developer focused medium? It looks really slick! Could it be a future Hugo and Mediu…

Dev.to is great. It's part of why I don't understand the point of FCC and HN leaving Medium. Why try to be the go-to independent platform for programming articles when Dev.to is already doing it so well.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#148

Post by WhitneyLand »

munificent wrote: post #122
WhitneyLand wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[Medium barely has a community]... Define barely. With all due and sincere respect, have you ever tried to build an audience or community from zero without partners, a leverage point, or an ad budget? Even getting a quality audience of thousands is non-trivial or costs money or needs a clever strategy. It reminds me of when people say, "I have an idea for a startup but I'm worried about people stealing it." I try to…

Not the person you're replying to but... > With all due and sincere respect, have you ever tried to build an audience or community from zero without partners, a leverage point, or an ad budget? Yes. > Even getting a quality audience of thousands is non-trivial or costs money or needs a clever strategy. That hasn't been my experience. I started with a blog. Then I wrote a book which I published online a chapter at a t…

>> [getting a quality audience of thousands of people is non-trivial, costs money, or needs a clever strategy]

>That hasn't been my experience...

It's kind of begging to differ with...yourself? There are some contradictions here.

You say you did it in part by writing books, yet typically writing books is considered non-trivial. If these books are trivial to write that doesn't make them bad. However, it could give the impression that on average writing a book is easy. Special cases withstanding, it is not easy.

>I just put a ton of effort into writing things

Putting in "tons of effort" is also generally not considered trivial. I guess you meant it required trivial skills, rather than a trivial amount of time. Great. However it still conflicts with your thesis because it means some part of this approach is not trivial, and these clarifications matter when the phrase tons of effort is used.

My point is, it can be very hard to build communities from scratch. Many people just can't do it, or can do it only after building the skillset over years of practice. Most pros avoid starting from scratch whenever possible, many accelerate the process through investment.

It sounds like you've managed to overcome a lot of obstacles with gumption, hard work, and some good intuition about the process. That's a nice accomplishment.

However for the purposes of those considering taking on the task, it's worth noting I can't see how it refutes anything I've said. I'm glad you were successful, and it seems you may have a knack for it. For others, I think it's useful to take care to not underestimate it.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#149

Post by jammygit »

ctvo wrote: post #15
overshard wrote: post #10

I feel like we are beating a dead horse here. Everyone I talk to knows Medium sucks. I personally hate the modal that comes up every time if I'm not logged in and how much of my screen is take up by fixed bars. Medium has a community though. Facebook sucks, but it has a community. Twitter sucks, but it has a community. You are going to get more people to see your post if you put it on Medium. You are going to get mor…

I may be one of the folks not part of the Medium community. I only visit Medium via direct links (on HN, shared on Twitter or shared directly to me by friends). I can't remember the times I've been on Medium's home page or opened up their app to browse. If those direct links sent me to somewhere else entirely tomorrow I wouldn't care.

Same. Also, I’m less likely to see medium posts because I can’t subscribe via email or rss without making an account

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#150

Post by WhitneyLand »

q3k wrote: post #112
WhitneyLand wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>[Medium barely has a community]... Define barely. With all due and sincere respect, have you ever tried to build an audience or community from zero without partners, a leverage point, or an ad budget? Even getting a quality audience of thousands is non-trivial or costs money or needs a clever strategy. It reminds me of when people say, "I have an idea for a startup but I'm worried about people stealing it." I try to…

> Define barely. With all due and sincere respect, have you ever tried to build an audience or community from zero without partners, a leverage point, or an ad budget? The Internet has been building communities from its inception. Medium has nothing on the average fan forum, IRC channel or even subreddit. They grow organically and if moderated properly, can last decades on zero budget. But it also seems like you're n…

The Internet hasn't built any communities. It's provided a fertile environment for people to create and grow them.

HTTP hasn't built any web services, people do that. Of course it true it sure does seem to have be conducive to allowing them to flourish, but having good soil, and having a skilled gardener growing something in it are distinct things.

Yes, countless communities have grown organically without someone explicitly planning, defining objectives, and thinking of these communities as important pieces of some business strategy.

Indeed, it didn't happen at all in the early days, and happens more and more now as it's become more obvious how much influence it can have on the success of certain businesses.

Your comment is a bit cynical. Thinking about a community as part of a business plan does not automatically mean exploiting people as sales targets, being at odds with respect for privacy, or other nefarious things than sometimes happen.

In fact it can be just as important to leverage the power of a strong community for a non-profit with altruistic goals. It's just a powerful new dynamic that has to be reckoned with like any other new phenomenon in tech and can be used for good or evil depending on what you stand for, just like most new innovations, or in this case an emergent social construct property of the Internet.

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