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I've been working to help Medium with this. They get journalism and have an excellent internal team run by the former EIC at Time. But they don't get expert pub

I've been working to help Medium with this. They get journalism and have an excellent internal team run by the former EIC at Time. But they don't get expert publications, i.e. pubs run by subject matter experts. I'd put together a self-improvement publication, Better Humans, based on what I'd learned working at O'Reilly during the heyday of O'Reilly books. Those were books for programmers written by programmers and edited by programmers. As a result, you could really trust what you were reading. In our pub, there's a prohibition around publishing any summaries. The author has to have 1st hand experience. And then there's a serious editing pass from someone else who's pretty experienced. All of that is economically feasible because of Medium's paywall. But so far, nobody has done the equivalent Programmer version of this. I got to talk to Medium about why and my theory was that it's twofold. Publishers don't trust that this is the final pivot and also they don't really know how to run an editorial pipeline. We were fast to figure it out because we'd spent so much time working in publishing (the other Better Humans editor is also former O'Reilly and Make). But I know it's possible and I'm trying to help Medium get more publications like this off the ground. When I looked at the existing ecosystem, I pushed away from even looking at HackerNoon and looking more at FreeCodeCamp. What would their articles look like with tighter editing at the acquisition, article, and copy stages? I think it would be a pretty great experience.

rchaud 8y ago
What you're suggesting sounds like a good idea. FreeCodeCamp has a number of talented contributors, but maintaining a consistently high quality of content is hard when there's no real "brand/editorial voice". Good to hear that there's a requirement to demonstrate real subject matter experience. Hopefully that cuts down on the volume of articles that are merely commentary on someone else's original researched work. Step 2 would be to outright ban "link-bait" titles like "6 things that.." "Ultimate", "Start to finish guide" "2019", etc. I know for a fact that I used to read much, much more online when writers didn't editorialize the title to fit what they think would obtain the highest numbers of clicks and shares.
- tonystubblebine 8y ago
  The gist is just that editing is expensive. I think FCC is not going to move inside the paywall (maybe because they are limited by their name), but that there are going to be good programmer-focused pubs that spend heavily on editorial. My reference for this is outdated, O'Reilly and then the old Railscast site. But I'm sure there is an appropriate middle ground that makes use of the new economics to do something valuable and high quality.
detaro 8y ago
Don't those publications still have the problem that people (e.g. here on HN, where it's the only thing visible) just see a "medium.com" domain, and not an identity that can stand out? Or are those publications getting exceptions from the "we don't do custom domains anymore" crap medium pulled a while ago? The domain you publish on is a strong signal. Not having your own both means your beholden to the platform your on (i.e. it'd be a lot more painful for Hackernoon to move somewhere else if they'd kill all their links etc in the process), and that you share the reputation with everyone else on that domain - which for medium.com is between mixed and fairly bad by now.
- tonystubblebine 8y ago
  Isn't a big part of the reputation of the medium.com domain here on HN the fault of the HN community? Why are we posting and upvoting so many crummy articles? I'm pretty sure custom domains aren't coming back. We're on a custom domain and I'm dying to get rid of it because I think it makes it look like Better Humans is a content marketing initiative for Coach.me (domain is betterhumans.coach.me). However, I would like if Medium moved faster to kick off pubs that were pushing high volumes of articles without a corresponding level of quality. It probably looks like I'm bickering with the Hacker Noon publisher in other parts of these comments--and that's because I am. I think the way he publishes is across the board bad: it's a waste of his reader's time, it's a waste of his own time (he has the initiative to do so much more with his life), and it drains eyeballs and reputation from other Medium articles, which then has an effect on both my own interest of trying to deliver great articles to people and of making money. There's an addition by subtraction opportunity for Medium where they push off the low-quality high-traffic pubs and then the .medium.com domain starts to look like a signal of quality in places like HN and Reddit.
  - smooke 8y ago
    What do you know about the way we publish? David from Hacker Noon here --- Most stories on Hacker Noon are not published by me, they are published by one of these four other editors https://hackernoon.com/meet-the-new-hacker-noon-editors-b37508a3e771 https://hackernoon.com/meet-the-new-hacker-noon-editors-b375... Every Hacker Noon story is reviewed by editor. On sites where anyone can publish, I'd guess less than 10% of stories are reviewed by an editor... but who knows? I heard 7 of the 50 most clapped stories in 2018 are on hackernoon.com https://twitter.com/search?q=most%20clapped%20hackernoon&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=most%20clapped%20hackernoon&src... but I don't trust claps these days b/c of the evidence I've seen showing how clap counts display differently for different site visitors. If I go to hackernoon.com right now, "Blockchain Empowering Women Around the World" displays as zero claps on the hackernoon.com homepage, but I am following the author and when I click on the story many people have clapped it... https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-empowering-women-around-the-world-7d52f8bf70f https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-empowering-women-around-th... But if claps are to be trusted as a measure of quality, Hacker Noon outperforms the vast majority Medium posts: https://schleiss.io/2018/07/28/average-hackernoon-claps/ https://schleiss.io/2018/07/28/average-hackernoon-claps/ BTW, greatly appreciate the kind words about doing more initiative with my life! I thought a top 5k site in the world was cool, but it is small potatoes when you're neighbors are making twice baked. As the kids say, "CHEEEEEEESE"

rchaud 8y ago

What you're suggesting sounds like a good idea. FreeCodeCamp has a number of talented contributors, but maintaining a consistently high quality of content is hard when there's no real "brand/editorial voice". Good to hear that there's a requirement to demonstrate real subject matter experience. Hopefully that cuts down on the volume of articles that are merely commentary on someone else's original researched work. Step 2 would be to outright ban "link-bait" titles like "6 things that.." "Ultimate", "Start to finish guide" "2019", etc. I know for a fact that I used to read much, much more online when writers didn't editorialize the title to fit what they think would obtain the highest numbers of clicks and shares.

tonystubblebine 8y ago
The gist is just that editing is expensive. I think FCC is not going to move inside the paywall (maybe because they are limited by their name), but that there are going to be good programmer-focused pubs that spend heavily on editorial. My reference for this is outdated, O'Reilly and then the old Railscast site. But I'm sure there is an appropriate middle ground that makes use of the new economics to do something valuable and high quality.

detaro 8y ago

Don't those publications still have the problem that people (e.g. here on HN, where it's the only thing visible) just see a "medium.com" domain, and not an identity that can stand out? Or are those publications getting exceptions from the "we don't do custom domains anymore" crap medium pulled a while ago? The domain you publish on is a strong signal. Not having your own both means your beholden to the platform your on (i.e. it'd be a lot more painful for Hackernoon to move somewhere else if they'd kill all their links etc in the process), and that you share the reputation with everyone else on that domain - which for medium.com is between mixed and fairly bad by now.

tonystubblebine 8y ago
Isn't a big part of the reputation of the medium.com domain here on HN the fault of the HN community? Why are we posting and upvoting so many crummy articles? I'm pretty sure custom domains aren't coming back. We're on a custom domain and I'm dying to get rid of it because I think it makes it look like Better Humans is a content marketing initiative for Coach.me (domain is betterhumans.coach.me). However, I would like if Medium moved faster to kick off pubs that were pushing high volumes of articles without a corresponding level of quality. It probably looks like I'm bickering with the Hacker Noon publisher in other parts of these comments--and that's because I am. I think the way he publishes is across the board bad: it's a waste of his reader's time, it's a waste of his own time (he has the initiative to do so much more with his life), and it drains eyeballs and reputation from other Medium articles, which then has an effect on both my own interest of trying to deliver great articles to people and of making money. There's an addition by subtraction opportunity for Medium where they push off the low-quality high-traffic pubs and then the .medium.com domain starts to look like a signal of quality in places like HN and Reddit.
- smooke 8y ago
  What do you know about the way we publish? David from Hacker Noon here --- Most stories on Hacker Noon are not published by me, they are published by one of these four other editors https://hackernoon.com/meet-the-new-hacker-noon-editors-b37508a3e771 https://hackernoon.com/meet-the-new-hacker-noon-editors-b375... Every Hacker Noon story is reviewed by editor. On sites where anyone can publish, I'd guess less than 10% of stories are reviewed by an editor... but who knows? I heard 7 of the 50 most clapped stories in 2018 are on hackernoon.com https://twitter.com/search?q=most%20clapped%20hackernoon&src=typd https://twitter.com/search?q=most%20clapped%20hackernoon&src... but I don't trust claps these days b/c of the evidence I've seen showing how clap counts display differently for different site visitors. If I go to hackernoon.com right now, "Blockchain Empowering Women Around the World" displays as zero claps on the hackernoon.com homepage, but I am following the author and when I click on the story many people have clapped it... https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-empowering-women-around-the-world-7d52f8bf70f https://hackernoon.com/blockchain-empowering-women-around-th... But if claps are to be trusted as a measure of quality, Hacker Noon outperforms the vast majority Medium posts: https://schleiss.io/2018/07/28/average-hackernoon-claps/ https://schleiss.io/2018/07/28/average-hackernoon-claps/ BTW, greatly appreciate the kind words about doing more initiative with my life! I thought a top 5k site in the world was cool, but it is small potatoes when you're neighbors are making twice baked. As the kids say, "CHEEEEEEESE"