4 ms·

this "Medium" style of writing kills me. Lots of words, little substance.

tchaffee 8y ago
It's fine if you don't like his style, but the "little substance" part is hardly true. I contribute to OSS on a very regular basis and I was left with four or five solid takeaways after reading the article. The author even admits he isn't good at writing but a lot of people asked him to write the article. I'm glad he did.
- eropple 8y ago
  Agreed. I'm about to release a fairly large JavaScript service as open-source (the Sidekiq to Kue's Resque, as it is), and I got a lot out of it.
walterbell 8y ago
Agreed, but any writing is better than none, if new writers have good examples to follow. Do you think this is specific to Medium? Why didn't it happen with Wordpress?
- prepend 8y ago
  > Agreed, but any writing is better than none This is not true at all. There are many examples of writing that is worse than nothing. Just look at many examples of clickbaity material [0], that would make the world better to not exist. This is also disproven by the truly dangerous stuff by extreme examples like Hitler, etc. This doesn’t apply to OP’s post, but I don’t think the philosophy that any content is better than none. I do think that personal writing is always helpful. Practice is really useful for writers. But most should stay private or at least unpromoted. When garbage is promoted actively to readers and then criticisms are shrugged off with “its just version 1.0” with no future edits or updates, we have a worse discourse. And I think this means we have a worse outcome than if no initial, shitty version is put out. I don’t think this is to Medium per se, but their format promotes clickbait, low engagement articles with their applause and payment scheme. [0] https://www.buzzfeed.com/sydrobinson1/times-pets-completely-ruined-the-mood https://www.buzzfeed.com/sydrobinson1/times-pets-completely-...
  - walterbell 8y ago
    What criteria do you recommend for qualifying the unpaid writing of an individual, as ready for online publication?
    - prepend 8y ago
      I don’t think I have a criteria. It’s pretty hard first off, and even if I could, mine wouldn’t be very useful for others. Probably the most useful would be the author honestly assessing their content. And second would be a good set of editors. Then you could trust the publication.
  - droidist2 8y ago
    I agree, I wish people would be more discerning and write less, tweet less, etc. and just wait until they have something really interesting to say. Then you have these marketing experts telling people to post at least once a day to keep their audiences engaged. Yuck... I guess the world will always run by extroverts.
jiveturkey 8y ago
gratuitous obscenity, speaking from on high, self-declared greatness. not saying the guy isn’t good at what he does and has done, but god he’s insufferable.

It's fine if you don't like his style, but the "little substance" part is hardly true. I contribute to OSS on a very regular basis and I was left with four or five solid takeaways after reading the article. The author even admits he isn't good at writing but a lot of people asked him to write the article. I'm glad he did.

eropple 8y ago
Agreed. I'm about to release a fairly large JavaScript service as open-source (the Sidekiq to Kue's Resque, as it is), and I got a lot out of it.

walterbell 8y ago

Agreed, but any writing is better than none, if new writers have good examples to follow. Do you think this is specific to Medium? Why didn't it happen with Wordpress?

prepend 8y ago
> Agreed, but any writing is better than none This is not true at all. There are many examples of writing that is worse than nothing. Just look at many examples of clickbaity material [0], that would make the world better to not exist. This is also disproven by the truly dangerous stuff by extreme examples like Hitler, etc. This doesn’t apply to OP’s post, but I don’t think the philosophy that any content is better than none. I do think that personal writing is always helpful. Practice is really useful for writers. But most should stay private or at least unpromoted. When garbage is promoted actively to readers and then criticisms are shrugged off with “its just version 1.0” with no future edits or updates, we have a worse discourse. And I think this means we have a worse outcome than if no initial, shitty version is put out. I don’t think this is to Medium per se, but their format promotes clickbait, low engagement articles with their applause and payment scheme. [0] https://www.buzzfeed.com/sydrobinson1/times-pets-completely-ruined-the-mood https://www.buzzfeed.com/sydrobinson1/times-pets-completely-...
- walterbell 8y ago
  What criteria do you recommend for qualifying the unpaid writing of an individual, as ready for online publication?
  - prepend 8y ago
    I don’t think I have a criteria. It’s pretty hard first off, and even if I could, mine wouldn’t be very useful for others. Probably the most useful would be the author honestly assessing their content. And second would be a good set of editors. Then you could trust the publication.
- droidist2 8y ago
  I agree, I wish people would be more discerning and write less, tweet less, etc. and just wait until they have something really interesting to say. Then you have these marketing experts telling people to post at least once a day to keep their audiences engaged. Yuck... I guess the world will always run by extroverts.

jiveturkey 8y ago

gratuitous obscenity, speaking from on high, self-declared greatness. not saying the guy isn’t good at what he does and has done, but god he’s insufferable.