
We Shouldn't Wait for Medium - bootload
http://scripting.com/2017/01/09/weShouldntWaitForMedium.html
======
michaelbuckbee
We're mostly developers here and Dave (the author) is in fact one of my
personal development heroes, and while it pains me I think we're all mostly
missing the point.

It's easy to look at a single Medium post and think: I could throw this
together with Jekyll and put it on S3 with a custom domain in about 10
minutes.

What that _misses_ is that there is a legit community that has grown up around
Medium that honestly enjoys reading articles. It's long form Twitter, the
community and following of each author and publication are inextricably linked
with greater site. You can't replace Twitter with a static site of posts
limited to 140 characters for all the same reasons you can't replace Medium so
easily.

I find it maddening. I wish we were all still using RSS + Google Reader, but
if a prominent a voice as DHH can get some wild multiplier of people reading
his words if he types them into the box on Medium instead of onto their very
well established blog, what chance do the rest of us have?

[https://m.signalvnoise.com/signal-v-noise-moves-to-
medium-c8...](https://m.signalvnoise.com/signal-v-noise-moves-to-
medium-c8083ce19686#.jgjbrsfji)

~~~
sharpercoder
This community thing may be the case, it doen't bring in any dollars. At least
not at any signifcant scale to continue developing the platform.

What the world needs is an easy to use web publisher, the Microsoft Word for
the Web. Sure, we can type text and publish that. We can't however add in math
formula's, pictures, excel sheet (parts), word document links, slideshows
anything digital really, with "unexpected simplicity and ease". There's always
pain involved, and I know individuals and companies are willing to pay heavily
if these problems are solved in an online publishing tool.

The community is now just there to generate critical mass for adoption, and
used as highly critical feedback userbase.

~~~
femto
Amaya might be of interest.

[https://www.w3.org/Amaya/](https://www.w3.org/Amaya/)

It's the W3C's reference browser implementation, with equal emphasis on
creation and viewing. To quote:

"Amaya is a Web editor, i.e. a tool used to create and update documents
directly on the Web. Browsing features are seamlessly integrated with the
editing and remote access features in a uniform environment. This follows the
original vision of the Web as a space for collaboration and not just a one-way
publishing medium."

Last time I tried it (several years ago), it would regularly crash, but it's
enough to open your eyes as to what might be.

\---

Edit: I should add a further quote: "It's development is stopped." Whilst it's
not realistic to use Amaya, it would be great if its model inspired others.

~~~
mrkgnao
Wasn't there some kind of static sites-on-decentralized Internet thing on HN a
few weeks back along fairly similar lines?

------
Inconel
Disclaimer: I've never published on Medium, I only follow a few blogs so my
experience is limited, and most importantly, I may be an idiot.

With that being said, I find Medium to be very frustrating to read. For one,
the page layouts seem really inefficient to me. I'm not sure how much of this
is due to the specific blogs I follow but many posts tend to have enormous
screen wide images interspersed between rather thin columns of text. I don't
think there is any other website I read that requires so much scrolling to
read so few words.

Even more annoying than the above is the completely broken commenting system.
Again, perhaps this is due to the blogs I follow and not indicative of the
greater platform but Medium's comments system actually make me nostalgic for
Disqus, which I never thought I'd say.

As an example, after I scroll through an article to get to the comments, I'm
usually only shown 3 comments before I have to press to show more, it usually
takes a while to load the additional comments. Then, if someone responds to a
comment, I need to press a button to show said response. Rather than expand
the comment to show the response, I am taken to a new page, except instead of
showing the response it actually just shows the original comment. I then have
to scroll to the bottom to view the response. Then once I'm done reading the
response, I click the back button on my browser to get to my previous place in
the comments, only Medium doesn't remember this and I'm back at the very top
of the article once again having to scroll through a large thin column of text
and expand the comments section. At this point I usually forgo looking at any
further responses.

Again, admittedly I don't use Medium that much so I might just be unfamiliar
with better ways of using the website. Am I doing something wrong or do others
find it just as frustrating?

~~~
chmike
There is indeed room for improvement. I wish they would listen more the users
or do ergonomic evaluations of the interface. Since the recent reduction of
the team I'm afraid they are now more focused into finding money and a viable
business model than enhancing the interface.

My attention to Medium was attracted by some of their high value articles that
were referenced on hacker news or reddit. I though that it must be a very good
journal. This is a successful result.

Now that I installed the app and browse articles on Medium I feel like I can't
find the start of the long tail. I wish I could adjust the signal to noise
threshold.

------
rmccue
We shipped a REST API in WordPress 4.7, and the API is going to continue to be
a focus of the project going forward. The great thing about that is that it
allows building entirely new interfaces without touching any backend code in
WordPress. As an example, we built a liveblogging app[0] (warning: unoptimised
React app not meant for production) entirely using the API that provided a new
interface customised just for liveblogging. This connects to any site[1] and
any theme.

WordPress has always had an advantage with the degree of customisation that's
allowed, and my hope is that we'll see even more work towards better
experiences with a shorter build-test-release cycle now. But, plugins aren't
the only solution.

In WordPress itself, the big focusses for the next release (4.8) are the REST
API, the Customiser (frontend live customisation), and the Editor. I think
we'll see plenty of movement in this area.

(I'm one of the leads on the API, a committer to WordPress, and also work for
an enterprise WP agency.)

[0]: [http://app.aweekofrest.hm/](http://app.aweekofrest.hm/) [1]:
[https://aweekofrest.hm/liveblog/](https://aweekofrest.hm/liveblog/)

~~~
mozumder
What's the response latncies of the API for an article with a gallery of
photos?

I'm in the fashion space.. would the API be able to handle Katy Perry linking
to a person's site from her Twitter with 95 million followers?

~~~
rmccue
it depends on the caching layers you have built on top of it, but the API did
power parts of HillaryClinton.com during the election.

------
cyberferret
Meh. Back in the early days of Medium, it was a good place to discover new
writers. I remember when they had 'collections' and you could create your own
collection really easily (say, for a writing group or special interests) and
moderate who published what in there.

Very quietly, they removed all that. I found my posts getting less and less
visibility on there until all the 'no name' authors like myself simply
disappeared as we were pushed aside by the 'big names' in the Internet world.

Nowadays it seems that you need the magical "Recommended by Medium Staff" or
"Recommended by Ev Williams" to be even seen by more than 20 people on that
platform. I obviously don't know the secret handshake to get those monikers on
the top of my posts. I have seen some inane drivel tagged with those magical
words, and I have seen some though provoking articles with only 2 or 3 likes
in a whole year because they missed the blessing.

Like Twitter et al, unless you know how to game the system, or you are a part
of the 'in crowd', then it simply seems to be a waste of time to try and
participate.

This may seem like a bitter rant, and it is, in large parts. But I wish there
was another independent blogging community out there which works a little like
HN. At least here, 80% of my posts go relatively unnoticed, but at least 20%
will elicit some interesting discussion and interest.

~~~
cyberferret
Another thing I hate about the new Medium is their removal of the old
'sidebar' comments - that was useful to annotate or discuss certain points
about the post with the author.

Now, you comment below, and EACH COMMENT is posted as a new Medium article?!?
So now my stats are cluttered with my actual posts, and the comments-as-posts.
Just more junk.

Additionally, you don't get to see ALL the comments under a post (you only see
posts from people you follow) unless you click a link. What is that about. It
would seem that some posts I read have NO comments, until I click the link
only to see an active discussion happening.

Oh, and long comments under a post are only partially shown. Clicking on them
refreshes the entire window to show the comment (and the comments to the
comment) in full screen. Going back from here to where you left off on the
stream of original post comments is almost impossible.

It is slowly moving from a nice, clean platform, to a really cluttered mess
that is increasingly difficult to navigate and consume content on.

~~~
hehheh
I get emails from medium reporting stats about some comment I wrote long ago.
I haven't opted out because I find it amusing; they're actually keeping track
of how many people look at a one line comment I made a few months ago. I know
computing is cheap these days but it's not _free_. Someone there thought that
comment view stats were worth tracking and reporting. Wow.

------
xiaoma
Medium will _never_ overtake WordPress.

Medium has a lot of buzz, a great founder and a powerful centralized system.
It felt like an upgrade to the web. WordPress on the other hand, is a force of
nature. Not only does it have a strong team working to improve it on all
levels, but it's open source and has somehow managed to attract _both_
gigantic community of marketers, entrepreneurs and consultants and a hoard of
GPL zealots making sure that code flows back into the mothership.

A dozen years ago, there was another company that held every advantage Medium
currently does, including a younger version of the exact same fouder—Blogger.
WordPress steamrolled Blogger. Even with the support of one of the most
powerful companies in the world, Blogger has faded from prominence and WP now
powers 25% of _all the sites on the web_. [https://martechtoday.com/wordpress-
used-on-25-percent-of-all...](https://martechtoday.com/wordpress-used-
on-25-percent-of-all-websites-report-151115)

The way I see it, posting on Medium is like guest posting on someone else's
blog or like writing on LinkedIn. It's a great way to get some exposure and
it's a tool that should be used, but any serious publisher needs their own
site they're using the guest posts to build up.

~~~
MiddleEndian
>The way I see it, posting on Medium is like guest posting on someone else's
blog or like writing on LinkedIn. It's a great way to get some exposure and
it's a tool that should be used, but any serious publisher needs their own
site they're using the guest posts to build up.

Honestly I see this as a very very good thing. It decentralizes control and
puts content creators in charge of their own works.

~~~
xiaoma
Having their own domain puts content creators in charge of their own works.
Medium can pull the plug on any given user, pivot, die or get acquired at any
time.

~~~
MiddleEndian
Exactly!

------
mcdoug
My biggest problem with Medium is not the platform, but the licensing. I don't
like my content being simply licensed to them.

~~~
onion2k
_I don 't like my content being simply licensed to them._

How would they publish it on their website if it wasn't licensed to them?

~~~
ominous
By not asking for a license? Does a newspaper stand have a license for the
content it sells?

Disclaimer: I may be an idiot.

~~~
adamlett
Copyright is about the right to _produce_ copies, not to sell them. The
newspaper stand doesn't produce the copies it sells.

~~~
ominous
Neither does medium. Medium is a dumb pipe. My browser renders the page. Does
firefox own a license?

Internetting is hard.

~~~
pjc50
Medium is not a dumb pipe, they're a publisher; if they started plagiarising
articles and publishing them without permission, they'd be DMCAd.

There _is_ a legal exemption for "dumb pipe" in EU law:
[https://copyrightblog.co.uk/2012/10/17/what-is-a-
temporary-c...](https://copyrightblog.co.uk/2012/10/17/what-is-a-temporary-
copy-and-who-cares/) which had to be put in because otherwise every single
router on a TCP/IP connection would require copyright licensing.

Your browser renders the page by means of making a _copy_ , which requires a
license to you. Usually this is granted by the website. It has been argued in
some places that this includes a right to control the "integrity of the
presentation", that is that you're not licensed to display the page if you
block ads.

~~~
ominous
For the average reader, there is no difference between medium, google cache,
rss reader, archive.is, screenshot, pdf, getpocket.com, copy pasted snippet or
printed pages of the same article. In that sense, medium means nothing. Just
some meaningless wheel in the whole system, annoying us with their ads. We owe
them nothing. Medium is blogger is livejournal is a column in a newspaper is
private subreddit is google+ is everything2 is svbtle is obtvse is wordpress
is textfiles is github pages is a mailing list is paper.

People ignore it takes some effort to "publish" content. The dissemination of
said content is such that we don't really respect, at all, these "publishers".

I don't really have a point, am just slightly annoyed to be reminded such
plumbing is, in fact, a business model.

------
oblib
I've been working on a site that is similar to medium. Not to compete with
them though. I love medium and the access it and exposure it gives those who
want to say something, and the ease of use.

You can check it out at [http://ibloc.com](http://ibloc.com) if you want.

I have not put near the kind of work into it that the good folks at Medium
have. It's just been an exercise for me to begin learning to use CouchDB,
PouchDB, and other open source tools but I wanted to make something that
anyone could use to share interesting stuff, whatever that might be (with the
obvious limits).

I think if "Medium" has any problems they stem from being a concept that is
still ahead of its time. Investors want to monetize everything, and it's fair
to say that it will have to support itself, but it's also fair to assume that
the old ways of doing that may not work too well.

To address that they will have to come up with some new ways, or adapt new
ways that spring up elsewhere, but there's still work that needs to be done on
the "new media" itself that is being developed.

While making ibloc I began to ponder how to "monetize it". That's part of the
fun of playing with a new or different (to me) concept. I think there are some
new/different ways to do that which might work, but who knows?

I believe we need it thought. Medium has and still is shining a light on a new
way to find and share info. It's an important project.

------
thenomad
A couple of comments on things not mentioned in this article:

\- Medium's design is one of the big reasons it succeeded. Things written in
Medium _look_ authoritative. They're also easy and pleasant to read. And that
means people are more likely to read them. If you're cloning Medium as Open-
Source, you need to clone the design. Yes, probably including the slow-ass
Javascript (or at least, split-test with and without and see which gets more
engagement).

\- Medium's discoverability is the other reason it works. If I write a post on
my own blog, as I have done for 20 years, no new readers find it unless I
promote it myself. I happen to be good at that, but most people aren't. On
Medium, there are built-in mechanisms to bubble content up, and that's
tremendously valuable if you don't already have a large audience and care
about people reading what you write.

\- The domain. I've observed over the years that which domain your content's
hosted on has an increasingly large effect on whether people are willing to
click through to it. (Why? It's shown next to the link on Reddit, Hacker News,
and other places. It's an obvious signal.). A "medium.com" domain link still
seems to carry more trustability than a "randomsite.com". They did a good job
building their brand.

------
dkarapetyan
Isn't medium going to add some ads any day now? Why are people worried about
sustainability. Once the ads are there people will either put up with them or
move on. I'm pretty sure I've seen this movie a few times now.

------
davidgerard
How easy is it to export content from Medium? Say, importing it into a
WordPress instance.

 _edit:_ of course, the loved one has a Medium site. Apparently it exports
your posts as just plain HTML. Doesn't appear to have metadata (post time,
etc, though that's in the filename). No idea about comments and annotations.

------
mattbgates
Although there are plenty of carbon copies that have arisen to mimic the
platform, it definitely would be a great idea for Medium to become open
source.

------
getup8
"open source software has been making the editing ease-of-use accessible to
any JavaScript developer"

What's a great open source mediumesque editor at the moment? Feel like the
choices are never ending / always changing. Quill? Medium-Editor? Scribe?

~~~
robinwassen
After some research we went with Scribe and it works well.

Our requirements were clean html output, stable and that it works in Chrome
and Safari.

Worth mentioning is that the maintainers does not focus on broad browser
support.

~~~
antirez
Please could you link to Scribe? Can't find it googling. Thanks.

~~~
robinwassen
[https://github.com/guardian/scribe](https://github.com/guardian/scribe)

Here you go!

~~~
antirez
Thanks!

------
flukus
Does medium do anything not handled by markdown + one of the million static
site generators?

~~~
tempodox
From a reader perspective: It does have a unified and competent optical design
(font + color choices) that's not being messed up by the sometimes strange
tastes of individual bloggers. I've seen too many blogs that _literally_ hurt
my eyes when I try to read them. Also, supports commenting on specific parts
of the text.

~~~
Semaphor
From another reader's perspective: It seems to make people post really large
images with content only available if you feel like scrolling down.

~~~
flukus
That's still a big step up from many blogs/tumblr/myspace/geocities pages.

------
rb1
Something ironic; the page loads white text onto a creamy background when
viewed from Chrome on android on my Note 3.

This made me chuckle a bit.

------
bsbechtel
I think a $7/month subscription to access anything over ~5 articles/month on
Medium would get a lot of people to pay, and I don't think it would chase off
publishers at this point. The value Medium has created is easily worth as much
as Netflix, and without a doubt more valuable than the paywalls other
publishers (NYT, WSJ) ask for.

~~~
douche
I don't know. Most Medium articles are not really worth paying for, in my
opinion, and so paywalling the site would just add it to that collection of
sites that I ignore and filter out, like the WSJ, NYT, Wired, etc, etc.

As valuable as Netflix? No way, not even close.

------
wodenokoto
While Wordpress may have become slow on the server side, I've found Medium
increasingly slow on the client side.

It sorta looks clean, but once you start scrolling, it turns out the page is
actually full of cruft and rather slow. I turn on Reader Mode for Medium pages
when possible now.

------
vonnik
We should wait for Medium ... to make a responsive web site? These guys. We'd
to fix something.

