Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why Medium Sucks

cdevn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 163 posts

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#81

Post by isoskeles »

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.

But what about claps? You can clap at the article.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#82

Post by tracker1 »

It only there were some kind of system self hosted blogs could use... that you could use an app or site to subscribe to... Like a Really Simple Syndication or something like that. You could pop open your app, and get through all the new posts from everyone you follow really quickly.

Nah, Medium and google's fast republishing proxy thingy are so much better.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#83

Post by vishnu_ks »

I don't think we need a centralised publishing platform like Medium ever again. Anyone can create a blog for free using Wordpress. RSS feeds are amazing and it can easily serve the job of subscribing to these blogs. Look at the podcasting community for example. It's built on top of RSS feeds and it is thriving. Nobody needs a Medium.com in Podcasting world. What we need in the blogging world are more platforms and apps that are built on top of RSS feeds. Better RSS readers. Platforms that makes it easier to easily find and subscribe to blogs using RSS. Platforms that brings audience to self hosted blogs.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#84

Post by nimonian »

Veen wrote: post #11

You need look no further than Ev Williams' opinions on the future of the web to understand why it sucks: "The idea won’t be to start a website. That will be dead. The individual website won’t matter. The Internet is not going to be about billions of people going to millions of websites. It will be about getting it from centralized websites." http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2015/09/09/mediums-eva...

This is pretty much what supermarkets did to the high street in the 20th century and I fully expect it to happen to the web in the 21st.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#85

Post by godot »

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…

Most comments I see about Medium tend to have this sentiment of "The service and tech suck, but the community and distribution are powerful."

In my very anecdotal experience, I've found that posting on Medium only gets me distribution if I choose to publish it on a popular publication; but does mostly nothing if only published on Medium. I have a Writer role on HackerNoon, which is one of the larger pubs on Medium. I also have about ~200 followers on Medium on my own account. I've found that when I post an article and publish on HackerNoon, I get a lot of reads and claps quickly. When I post one just under my own Medium account, it hardly gets anything. I'm not sure having someone "follow" you does much at all in surfacing your post. If my post is about a topic that is frequently searched (e.g. how to set up something on some Linux distro, etc.), eventually the SEO traffic starts flowing in and I get a clap every now and then. But that can be true of a blog hosted anywhere.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#87

Post by ausjke »

For me it's about too many eye candies there, I really just want simple text with pictures only when it is absolutely necessary.

that probably explains why I like HN, simple and brief, it might not be the most impressive UI when you started to use it, but it works well for the long term.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#88

Post by cutenewt »

WhitneyLand wrote: post #78
rylandgold wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Medium barely has a community. I also think you're right when you say > I find the discussion of HOW to get communities onto better platforms to be a more interesting topic than why the current platform sucks, especially when that platform doesn't even seem to listen to the criticism. But you need to remember that's a very progressive position. Most friends I have are completely unaware that Medium has become…

>[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…

I see criticism of Medium's community as the engagement feels shallow vs. something that's more robust like Reddit

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#89

Post by rp36 »

Does Medium support exporting publication? I can export my posts but does not appear the entire publication can be exported or has API support. If anyone have looked into it, appreciate the tips.

Re: Why Medium Sucks

#90

Post by zentiggr »

Crinus wrote: post #80
TuringNYC wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember hosted Wordpress also had a community but without the [current, new] problems of Medium. I realize Wordpress isnt as slick as Medium, but genuinely curious -- why don't people use hosted Wordpress as an alternative given their community?

I think you answered your own question: because it isn't pretty. People like shiny stuff.

I would browse with Lynx if it got me to meaningful content reliably.

"Web design" seems to me to be a game of "will this flashy new widget/layout/whatchamacallit draw more attention?"

Blech.

Post reply on HN