
Why I Left Medium - jmduke
http://kennethreitz.org/why-i-left-medium/
======
rsobers
I'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
I 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.

~~~
derekp7
It 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
Then they should say that's what it's for. I think that would be simple
enough.

~~~
ubernostrum
Every 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.

~~~
x3c
To put it other way round, maybe comprehensive writing is not a strong suite
of the Internet.

------
jgrahamc
It'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.

~~~
msutherl
I really like the idea of writing in a text editor, and have tried to do so
many times in Vim, but for some reason it's very important for me to see the
result as it will appear to the reader as I'm writing. I don't know why this
is, it just happens. When I'm in a WYSIWYG word processor with the typography
mostly figured out, everything goes smoothly.

Likewise, when I write a post on web forums, Facebook, HN, etc., I need to
publish it first before I can properly edit. Seeing the post in context is
somehow important.

~~~
philsnow
You can very likely wire that up, if you've got a bee in your bonnet to do so.

When I was editing latex files regularly, I had an environment something like

    
    
        $ make output.pdf
        $ xpdf -remote projectname output.pdf & while inotifywait -e modify **/* ; do make output.pdf; xpdf -remote projectname -reload; done
    

Then any time I changed a figure or a tex file or an embedded screenshot or
whatever (any transitive dependency of output.pdf), make would rebuild it and
display the result. xpdf nicely does not change the scroll position (even a
little bit), so this gave me a rather nice nearly-real-time WYSIWYG view.

My $EDITOR at the time was vim and it never entered my head to try to contrive
automatic saving every time I paused typing or something like that, but that
seems like a fun idea.

~~~
msutherl
Well, there are a lot of things like that, e.g.:
[http://socrates.io](http://socrates.io), but it doesn't do it for me. I like
to be actually manipulating the end result.

------
MatthewPhillips
> 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
Please make this happen.

Bonus points if it's agnostic to markup format.

~~~
sneak
Please tell me you're kidding. This is already how 99% of static site
generators work.

~~~
agentultra
Give me a link to one then because I clearly missed it and could use your
help.

The 1% of static site generators I've seen are written in scripting languages
that require me to install an interpreter and related build tools. Then I'm
stuck with their own custom template, markup, and configuration language. And
I just don't really care to manage all of that. Even as a highly technical
user.

I wrote one myself in the 90s in Perl (and have thankfully lost the source
code). They're fun to noodle with if you have the time.

I currently run my site on Pelican (and even patched the WP importer so that
it properly preserves WP formatting). It's great but terrible. I still have to
keep around a virtualenv. I have to maintain templates that I'll never be able
to reuse. It's still not quite good enough. It's a good thing I make my money
programming in Python and am familiar with the developer tools.

I'd like something a little more hands-off and with fewer dependencies.

~~~
SnowLprd
We do our best to make Pelican as user-friendly as we can, but of course there
are areas we'd like to improve upon. Community contributions to that end are
most welcome. (^_^)

------
pavs
The 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
Medium 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
Your 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.

~~~
skinnymuch
Wow. You perfectly worded the issue I've had in the back of my mind with
Medium (but not Tumblr like you say).

------
minimaxir
It'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
Exactly! 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....](http://blog.macuyiko.com/post/2013/pelican-switch-follow-
up.html)

------
slig
I 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
>How long until twitter buys Medium and decides to shut everything down?

You should look up who runs Medium.

~~~
dwhly
How long till x buys Medium and/or it goes out of business and decides to shut
everything down, like Posterous, et al?

------
DanielBMarkham
The 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.

------
ippa
One 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
Using a service like PagodaBox helps a lot with the security issues. The
filesystem for everything but uploads is read-only.

~~~
ronnix
Why not Heroku in this case?

------
jjindev
I 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.

------
at-fates-hands
I 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
I hope that for some people, Neocities is a useful alternative. :)

~~~
themodelplumber
There'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.

------
mathattack
Medium doesn't seem to be for everyone. It does seem to simplify things for
some readers though, if at the expense of many writers.

------
pydanny
This sums up all the reasons why I never wanted to go to medium.

------
generj
I 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.

~~~
zmitri
And even that is absolutely fleeting. You're probably better off writing it on
your own and submitting to Hacker News as the potential reach is much greater.

~~~
briandear
Assuming your subject is relevant to HN. Not every dev is interested in tech
blogging.

------
jwmoz
I don't understand why you wouldn't have considered all those bullet points
before moving to a new platform.

------
oakaz
I 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
What 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
go read about jekyll you are on internet

------
ricardobeat
> 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.

------
paperwork
is 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
For automatic syntax highlighting
[http://softwaremaniacs.org/soft/highlight/en/](http://softwaremaniacs.org/soft/highlight/en/)
is excellent.

------
webwanderings
I 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
"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?

------
will_lam
I 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.

------
ereckers
One 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.

------
axblount
I 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!

------
donnfelker
The 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.

~~~
themodelplumber
Exactly. 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.

------
codezero
For 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.

------
btipling
For 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.

------
elnate
As 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.

------
cpeterso
I wonder how his temporary "HTTP 301 Moved Permanently" redirect to medium.com
affects his resurrected blog's search engine placement.

~~~
kenneth_reitz
It wasn't pretty. Not the end of the world, though.

------
lowglow
Is 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
Medium 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
Ugh, 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.

------
MarlonPro
@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
I 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 ;)

------
jusben1369
"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.

------
the906
Is 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
That 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?

------
codereflection
This 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. ;)

------
joeblau
I'm on Medium, but truthfully I'm waiting for Ghost.

~~~
jeswin
Can 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
Maybe. 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
You will be able to self host it, just like Ghost. Made with Nodejs and Mongo.

------
furilo
And you could not have been aware of all those things __before __moving to
Medium?

------
briandear
Apparently, I'm not cool enough to be invited to medium. If anyone has any
pull..

~~~
espeed
Recommend a post and interact with the site, and then one day you'll notice
you have the opportunity to do more.

------
knes
Well that didn't took long to see those kind of article pop up....

------
rony1986
i wrote a blog on this
[http://www.ronyjacob.com/day/2013/08/01](http://www.ronyjacob.com/day/2013/08/01)

------
waynepan
Why not post to both?

------
john_butts
There 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.

------
maxwin
The post is more about why one should join medium...

------
plg
what the heck is Medium

~~~
jordanmoore_
[http://bit.ly/167W0io](http://bit.ly/167W0io)

~~~
plg
;) thanks

I guess my attempt at irony failed

(again)

------
targusman
He's got an affiliate link in the article. He is so greedy.

