4 ms·
> How can platforms like Medium cultivate a culture that deprioritizes and devalues the types of spam content the article author is referring to? There's a lot
by terda12 11y ago
> How can platforms like Medium cultivate a culture that deprioritizes and devalues the types of spam content the article author is referring to?
There's a lot of really well run subreddits like /r/AskScience and /r/AskHistorians where the people who get the final say are usually the ones who have the best credentials.
For websites like medium, it's less about the credentials but more about how flashy your title can be. Just look at the top articles - it's usually titled something along the lines of "You're all missing the point of X" or "Elon Musk is Dangerous" or "How the Tech World Trashes Women". And these articles tend to be written by social justice warriors or "motivational speakers" who have never actually done anything but coach.
- seivan 11y agoI remember Anil Rash being behind Medium, if I remember correctly that should give you an indication on why there is so much trash on it. You're not wrong, just missing why it is the way it is. It makes more sense now, doesn't it?
- lmm 11y agoPlease be clearer. Rather than these clever-clever allusions, tell us all: who's Anil Rash, what should we know about them?
- i336_ 11y agoReddit has built an incredible community of contributors and moderators that's (amazingly) largely self-sustaining. You're right - in the large majority of situations, the person voted to the top often has the most qualifications. That's an example of a social model (upvoting/downvoting affecting visibility) that's a design win. What I'm wonder about is how to explore building a publishing/content platform with a data/interaction model that promotes the highest quality and authoritative content in a similar sort of way. Medium's automatic recommendation system is too easy to play the SEO game with. The title examples you give are spot on; I usually avoid everything on Medium that wasn't painstakingly discovered by a human and saved for later reference here or on some other site like Reddit. (Your reference of people who do nothing but coach reminds me of how I see politicians: they're like the people in young children's books who have a fixed position ("policeman", "man walking down street with dog", "grocer", "bus driver", etc) and don't have a life outside that position.)
- br3w5 11y agoReally, certainly for technical articles which can gather interested readers by posting on HN or reddit, why use medium at all and not some other alternative? Because it looks nice?!
- badloginagain 10y agor/AskHistory has very well defined rules, and enforces those rules quite well. This ensures the quality is of the highest order, even if it limits growth. What rules are there on Medium? It's the wild west, really- then again I don't really know, I don't browse Medium. Sometimes really smart people will use Medium as an essay writing tool, and when I see it through my social network I read it. Curation through social network filters may not be the best, but all the articles I've read from Medium have been of a quality and topic I find interesting.