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Why I Left Medium
- generj 13y agoI agree with the article; I haven't ever been comfortable ceding control of my personal website to a third-party. Inevitably conflicts of interest arise. The great appeal of Medium is the potential of featured content being re-tweeted by thousands.
- pydanny 13y agoThis sums up all the reasons why I never wanted to go to medium.
- at-fates-hands 13y agoI hope more people who have a greater pull then me continue to push the idea you can control your own content and it doesn't cost you your sanity. A lot of companies like Medium were created to simplify things. In reality, you give up quite a bit of control of your content to them.
- scott_karana 13y agoI hope that for some people, Neocities is a useful alternative. :)
- themodelplumber 13y agoThere's a good amount of platform distrust with Neocities, too, in that it has the feel of a sandbox and gives off the scent of "may go through some awkward growing pains." But what a great idea. Hope it gains traction.
- jjindev 13y agoI think it's good to have a low-overhead method for infrequent writers (people who want to expand beyond their tweet on occasion). Medium seems a good name and place for that. On the other hand, I can totally see why people who write frequently and think of their corpus as more than an auxiliary to twitter would want more.
- MatthewPhillips 13y ago> Two different parts of the brain conflicting. When I’m writing, I don’t want to be in code mode. This is one of the reasons why I think static site generators are really in their infancy. He describes Pelican as "Jekyll for Python". This highlights what is wrong. You shouldn't have to decide on a tool based on what language it is written in; you shouldn't need to know what language it is written in. A static site generator should have a very simple folder structure, something like: draft/ published/ site/ templates/ That's it. You write markdown files in draft/ and move them to published/ when you're done. The generator runs as a daemon and spits out site/ No config files. No `bundle install` nonsense.
- agentultra 13y agoPlease make this happen. Bonus points if it's agnostic to markup format.
- frou_dh 13y agoIt's probably already been done several times over. There are tons of homemade static site generators languishing out there.
- agentultra 13y agoIt has been. Seems most people write one of their own at some point. I found the OP's suggestion appealing because it sounds like a solution that wouldn't require me to install some interpreter, a bunch of supporting libraries and tools, write my templates in some custom template language, custom configuration language, scripts, yadda, yadda. It would be nice to have a system that ran as a unix-y daemon or cron job that just took a single dot-file and did everything for you.
- sneak 13y agoPlease tell me you're kidding. This is already how 99% of static site generators work.
- 13y ago
- rsobers 13y agoI'm sorry but saying you felt "dead inside" because of your blogging platform choice is a bit too much hyperbole for me. That said, I'd never give my content to a platform like Medium. I happen to like the "writing experience" of Gist, but there's this thing called copy/paste which makes it easy to get the content over to WordPress when I'm done.
- echohack 13y agoI think what it comes down to is that people are scared that Medium is going to use their license to steal all your content. Their license is weird: It says it allows them to make derivative works with your content, but at the same time it says it allows you to retain ownership of your content. What does that mean? Nobody knows. I think if Medium just clarified that one line in their license it would make everyone's fears go away.
- gohrt 13y agoIt means the same thing that this license means everywhere else: Medium can do whatever they want with your submission, and so can you.
- derekp7 13y agoIt is standard CYA terms to keep them from getting sued by their users whenever they decide to change the site in such a way that displays your content in a different manner than what you expected.
- echohack 13y agoThen they should say that's what it's for. I think that would be simple enough.
- ubernostrum 13y agoEvery service you've ever signed up for that accepts user-generated/submitted content has a clause functionally identical to this. Of course, every time someone reads one of those clauses they think it implies all sorts of evil, because reading comprehension is not a strong suit of the internet.
- mathattack 13y agoMedium doesn't seem to be for everyone. It does seem to simplify things for some readers though, if at the expense of many writers.
- knes 13y agoWell that didn't took long to see those kind of article pop up....
- codereflection 13y agoThis is just a case of choosing something before making sure that it meets all of your requirements. I'm sure that we've all been there in one form or another. I certainly have been, more often than I'd like to admit. ;)
- DanielBMarkham 13y agoThe Great Internet Scam: tricking people into taking their time to create content for your web property, thereby increasing the value of your property. We've seen one major application after another go down this same road.
- oakaz 13y agoI love Medium as a guy who used Jekyll for years. It was a huge waste of time. And if I ever spend even 10 more minutes on creating a dummy blog again, I'll ask 10 dudes to beat me with sticks.
- themodelplumber 13y agoWhat was a waste of time about using Jekyll? How much time was wasted? And what is a "dummy" blog? I've never used Jekyll, just curious.
- oakaz 13y agogo read about jekyll you are on internet
- minimaxir 13y agoIt's not just a matter of platform customization, it's a matter of identity. Who remembers the author of a Medium article after one finishes reading?
- Macuyiko 13y agoExactly! In fact, Marco -- which the author refers to -- has also been telling this. Since 2011, in fact: http://www.marco.org/2011/07/11/own-your-identity http://www.marco.org/2011/07/11/own-your-identity After a month of struggling between Blogger's brain-dead, non-Markup, stuck-in-2001's editor and contemplating a complete switch to Medium, I also decided to just go with a simpler, static blog (running on a stripped down Pelican). As coincidence would have it, I just decided to put up some random thoughts about this today as well: http://blog.macuyiko.com/post/2013/pelican-switch-follow-up.html http://blog.macuyiko.com/post/2013/pelican-switch-follow-up....
- freework 13y agoFor a long time I thought medium.com was the blog of one single ambitions, epic tech blog writer.
- btipling 13y agoFor what it's worth Medium has a really top notch team, and they are still iterating and exploring. This feedback will probably be valuable to them. I have found the Medium UI to be very good.
- webwanderings 13y agoI thought Medium was a platform which you write for. You don't become Medium platform. They are running it like an editorialized magazine. Your articles are promoted by the platform and not just by yourself. So why not maintain your own blog and write for others as well?
- voyou 13y ago"They are running it like an editorialized magazine." This is the odd thing about Medium - it's a bit like an editorialized magazine but with no editorial line or identity. If I want to read people writing about academic arts and humanities topics for a non-academic audience, I might go read the London Review of Books; if I want to read extensively researched but also personal essays, I'll read the New Yorker. If I read Medium I get - what? Some stuff written by people on the internet that some other people on the internet thought was good?
- lowglow 13y agoIs medium trying to compete with wordpress? Maybe the simplicity is its beauty. Not many people care for all the bells and whistles that you can dig into with wordpress. I agree that if you're thinking about analytics, etc then you've probably outgrown these simple platforms. In this case you should definitely consider running your own install because now it's your business, and not just a journal.
- minimaxir 13y agoMedium is both a promotion brand and a platform; Wordpress is mostly just a platform. The better analogy would be http://tryghost.org http://tryghost.org and Wordpress.
- voyou 13y agoUgh, that looked good until I got to the bit about using Markdown. I'm not using a vt100 terminal, for gods sake, I can handle an editing system that understands basic formatting.
- the906 13y agoIs there a way to automate your own personal site to update a medium post? I've looked at Medium and while it is visually nice and laid out well, it seems very "cs student who just graduated college and wanted to make a start-up".
- Macuyiko 13y agoThat would be interesting, but I don't think it's on Medium's list of priorities at the moment. Maybe it's time for an unofficial API?
- slig 13y agoI thought HN decided couple of months ago with the whole posterous thing to never, ever, trust a third part to host you blog for free. How long until twitter buys Medium and decides to shut everything down?
- unknownian 13y ago>How long until twitter buys Medium and decides to shut everything down? You should look up who runs Medium.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- dwhly 13y agoHow long till x buys Medium and/or it goes out of business and decides to shut everything down, like Posterous, et al?
- jgrahamc 13y agoIt's weird to me that people need all these amazing tools to just write stuff. I typically write things in emacs text mode buffers because I'm writing words and don't need any bells and whistles. Almost all of The Geek Atlas was written like that and then pasted into whatever thing O'Reilly wanted me to create XML with.
- joshdance 13y agoSome people might say it's weird that people write in emacs. :) To each his own.
- jgrahamc 13y agoSure, but an emacs text buffer is pretty stripped down; that was my real point.
- eshvk 13y agoI dunno. I personally like writing on vim or on paper. However, there is a reason I feel more expressive. It is the very nature of these specific tools. I really like vim as much as I really like writing on moleskine. So I understand when people say the medium in which they portray stuff is important for them.
- rickyc091 13y agoWell, I think it's also partly about being part of the medium network and having your writing surface for others to see.
- rhizome 13y agoAnd people denigrate portals...
- antitrust 13y agoI think his point was that the writing was fine, but control over the web publishing portion was not. As far as writing goes, I think a lot of us work in text editors. They're more responsive and stable than word processors.
- paperwork 13y agois there a blog framework/platform specifically for developers? I want to show code samples with syntax highlighting (and possibly the ability to actually run the sample code)? is there something which lets me embed d3.js charts? i've looked at pelican, jekyll, etc. but i want something simpler.
- hpaavola 13y agoFor automatic syntax highlighting http://softwaremaniacs.org/soft/highlight/en/ http://softwaremaniacs.org/soft/highlight/en/ is excellent.
- codezero 13y agoFor a lot of people, the allure of Medium isn't the tools or tracking, it's the audience and distribution. If you already have an audience then a place like Medium will do very little for you.
- jwmoz 13y agoI don't understand why you wouldn't have considered all those bullet points before moving to a new platform.
- jusben1369 13y ago"I have more than words to organize but want something that manages all that so I don't get distracted coding now my traffic is dying and I'm helpless to stop that and it turns out I changed to a service that only manages words well" I feel like this could have perhaps done with another draft/iteration to tighten up the goal of the article.
- pavs 13y agoThe concept of spending your time on writing things that you are obviously very passionate about on someone's else's platform so that guy can make money off of your writing seems so silly to me. Specially among people who are supposedly tech savvy. Just spend 5 bucks a month and less than 45 minutes of initial setup, you can have your own blog and have 100% control over whatever the hell you want to do. People who can't do that, should probably use yet-another-blogging-platform like Medium.
- dxm 13y agoMedium is providing a service with the expectation of making money, if a user is a decent writer then there is the potential of further opportunities being presented to the user. Medium (and Wordpress, and other similar platforms) are providing the user with value, it's not entirely one-way. I'm tech savvy (B.Sc. Artificial Intelligence and Applied Mathematics, Computer Programmer working full-time for 8 years since University) and I choose to use Medium because I don't want to manage my own personal server, or buy domain names, or have recurring expenses, or have to fiddle with configuration files, or hack templates. Simplicity means the world. Saying that; I agree with you (in that people contributing their data to platforms for the profit of others is silly.) Facebook is something I don't use because I don't see what I can get back from it that I can't already get from text messages or face-to-face interaction. Medium at least offers me something in exchange for contribution.
- dasil003 13y agoYour last point is interesting because I feel the exact opposite. Facebook I don't have a problem with because I just post throwaway stuff on their anyway, and all my RL friends so they actually have a better chance of seeing it vs on my blog or twitter or whatever. But Medium feels like it's taking the part of my online presence that I want to be most unique and commoditize it into this mass website that will only ever make the founders of the site famous. I know that sounds extreme because they do provide you with a great tool and some means of exposure you wouldn't otherwise have, but it just feels so dehumanizing somehow. Like it's taking the very best part of the internet and attempting to privatize for the benefit of some heavy-hitters in the silicon valley old boys network. And I think I put my finger on something with that last bit, because Medium is really kind of the same thing as Tumblr which never bothered me; maybe because it didn't have that patina of tech insider design perfection bestowed upon us in private beta as if from the gods themselves.
- plg 13y agowhat the heck is Medium
- jordanmoore_ 13y agohttp://bit.ly/167W0io http://bit.ly/167W0io
- plg 13y ago;) thanks I guess my attempt at irony failed (again)
- donnfelker 13y agoThe authors sentiments about why he disliked Medium are the exact reasons I've not moved over there yet. My concerns center around building an audience and being able to stay in contact with them. How am I supposed to give away an email course with in post marketing through drip campaigns in Medium? I can't. I cant customize the sidebar to let someone know about a related post that may also have some effect on their life. Just doesn't work. Medium sounds cool but it just feels half baked to me at this point. I dunno ... maybe that will change.
- lmm 13y agoI genuinely can't tell if you're serious. Medium succeeds because it offers the best reading experience. If it's harder to market there than a traditional blog, that's a feature.
- themodelplumber 13y agoExactly. Once you get any sort of marketing itch, or design itch (wait until the next set of trends really hit home and Medium is caught out), or IA or UX itch, you are going to wonder how much you could have done on your own by now.
- ippa 13y agoOne of the reasons I never started blogged seriously is something like this. It's a very silly reason, I dev alot, I have ideas for blogposts.. but I just never could decide on a platform. I don't like the idea of a hosted blogplatform, for some of the reasons Kenneth didn't. I refuse to run Wordpress due to it's security history and upgrade hell. I know, there's security issues with everything.. except for maybe a static site with jekyll or something :). It's just that ages ago I thought that Wordpress was a silver bullet making various sites and I got bitten by it. I never found a polished ruby/rails blog app. I've searched, maybe not lately. Has this changed? A static site generator writing blog posts with git never excited me much, I like a kickass RTE. The idea of doing my own blog comes up now and then but I haven't acted on it yet. What options are there out there besides PHP? Preferable ruby/sinatra/rails over django.
- kenneth_reitz 13y agoUsing a service like PagodaBox helps a lot with the security issues. The filesystem for everything but uploads is read-only.
- ronnix 13y agoWhy not Heroku in this case?
- smacktoward 13y agoWords written on a crappy platform always beat words not written on a beautiful one. Don't get too hung up on the question of tools, or you'll spend all your time looking at tools and none of it writing. > A static site generator writing blog posts with git never excited me much, I like a kickass RTE. Ironically this is a good description of the original "static site generator", Movable Type: http://www.movabletype.com/ http://www.movabletype.com/ It has a dynamic backend (written in Perl, which some people find a turnoff, but unless you're hacking the software itself I can't imagine why) with a nice RTE available for editing, but in its default configuration all its output is simple easy-to-serve static files.
- eropple 13y ago
- axblount 13y agoI can understand why the OP dislikes the homogeneity. But from a reader perspective, I don't mind it at all. There's nothing to distract from the post. It's just one simple battle-tested design. No cover to judge the book by. > I felt dead inside. Thanks for the hearty chuckle!
- furilo 13y agoAnd you could not have been aware of all those things before moving to Medium?
- waynepan 13y agoWhy not post to both?
- briandear 13y agoApparently, I'm not cool enough to be invited to medium. If anyone has any pull..
- espeed 13y agoRecommend a post and interact with the site, and then one day you'll notice you have the opportunity to do more.
- kenneth_reitz 13y agoAsk someone with an account to let you comment on one of their drafts before they publish it. Boom, you have an account.
- will_lam 13y agoI never quite understood the fascination with medium.. it's cool and all, but I'd rather invest in my own "platform" as Marco had put it and control everything with respect to my brand, content and tweak anything and everything to my heart's desire.
- cpeterso 13y agoI wonder how his temporary "HTTP 301 Moved Permanently" redirect to medium.com affects his resurrected blog's search engine placement.
- kenneth_reitz 13y agoIt wasn't pretty. Not the end of the world, though.
- ereckers 13y agoOne reason for the popularity of WordPress especially the self hosted version, "spaghetti" and all, is that many people have already learned that lesson. It's your content, put it on your domain and do with it what you will. Forget enriching a network.
- ricardobeat 13y ago> To lazily prevent link-rot, I setup a simple blanket 301 redirect from the old domain to my profile on Medium. Things felt right That doesn't prevent link rot at all. 301 is a permanent redirect, the old links will end up being replaced and killed one by one, since they all redirect to the same content. And to top it off, now that he's stopped using Medium his profile might simply disappear one day.
- MarlonPro 13y ago@kenneth I saw that you are using Midori Traveler's Notebook. I'm just wondering how are you actually use it. I own the regular traveler's notebook myself. But it's still empty right now. I see a lot of people using it as journal, sketch notebook, etc. but I'm not one of those creative type. How are you using it? How do you decide which items go to it vs not. Thanks!
- kenneth_reitz 13y agoI basically use it as an idea sketchpad for brainstorming. I keep a book of the thin blank pages in it, as well as one squared. The squared goes mostly unused, but it's useful for writing down visual ideas for websites and such. Hope that helps ;)
- elnate 13y agoAs a reader, my main complaint with medium is space bar scroll not working. I never realised how big of a part of my workflow it was until it stopped.
- losethos 13y agoI always have a captive audience. They take notes as I write. I'm like a professor on an overhead and I repeat every semester. God says... C:\TAD\Text\WEALTH.TXT the exchange between Edinburgh and London was frequently three per cent. against Edinburgh, and those bills at sight must frequently have cost A that premium. This transaction, therefore, being repeated at least four times in the year, and being loaded with a commission of at least one half per cent. upon each repetition, must at that period have cost A, at least, fourteen per cent. in the year. At other times A would enable to discharge the first bill of exchange, by drawing, a few days before it b ---- It can seem less glorious repeating the same stuff. You get better ... better analogies for your sales pitch if it's the operating system... repeating seems depressing, but its not. All the disciples went a preached over and over in all the cities. Same thing, many times. God is nice and says new stuff. As good as life gets is being God's preacher... dont call my rabbi, though... I'm confused.
- joeblau 13y agoI'm on Medium, but truthfully I'm waiting for Ghost.
- jeswin 13y agoCan we ping you to be a tester once we are online? :) It will look like this - http://flipper.foraproject.org http://flipper.foraproject.org We'll have the same writing experience as Medium, with markdown support, custom domains and an OSS license. You basically post into various forums, which you can moderate.
- joeblau 13y agoMaybe. How is the hosting handled by your project? One of the things I'm looking forward to on Ghost is the ability to hack on their dashboard. I'm asking about the hosting as well because I want to have the power to host my blog on my own servers.
- jeswin 13y agoYou will be able to self host it, just like Ghost. Made with Nodejs and Mongo.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- maxwin 13y agoThe post is more about why one should join medium...
- john_butts 13y agoThere is a constant problem where I mouse over a link and see only medium dot com. It's a contextual stripping in a marketplace that pretty explicitly judges you on the unique ribbons in your hair.
- targusman 13y agoHe's got an affiliate link in the article. He is so greedy.
- rony1986 13y agoi wrote a blog on this http://www.ronyjacob.com/day/2013/08/01 http://www.ronyjacob.com/day/2013/08/01