Comment by tonystubblebine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tonystubblebine | Hacker News Reader

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tonystubblebine

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.

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.

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.

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-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... 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-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/

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"

That Schleiss article makes exactly the point I'm trying to make to you. For a publication of your size 375 claps is a dud (that article is using data from when Medium's algorithm's would have been working in your favor). 75% of your articles are completely failing to get traction.

The job your editors should be doing is quality control. They should be filtering what you publish way down. And your job as the publisher should be to set guidelines for quality. None of that is happening and as a result, you're putting a constant stream of low quality in front of people. What's so great about being a top 5K site if you the impact is wasting people's time?

As comparison, I looked at the last 50 articles we published and only found 2 that didn't get 375 claps. Those were duds and we tried to learn lessons from them.

We do need to improve quality control. Having software designed for multiple editors instead of one un-filterable feed of many submissions for so multiple editors will help tremendously.

But claps aren't an accurate measure of quality or traffic. Sometimes they display and sometimes they don't. Is 375 from 8 people or 375 people? It's designed to blur the line.

I'd note that from the links that have trended on HN, Hacker Noon is, for me, now categorised basically under "assume shallow clickbait, don't bother".

And, honestly, "Blockchain Empowering Women Around the World" as the article you chose to mention here isn't doing anything to change that categorisation - the title is clickbait, and the content shallow to the point where it reminded me of the output of SEO content mills more than anything else. I read the article hoping to provide a more nuanced critique, but there really wasn't any there there to critique, and that's precisely what makes me default to skipping any hacker noon link based on the repeatedly validated expectation it'll be a waste of my time.

I'd also note that the passive-aggressive-smugness of your comment does you and your brand no favours either, but on the other hand if somebody'd just attacked my baby I could easily see myself making an even worse mess of it ... but perhaps you might want to consider that, given it's personal for you, your public comments could possibly also do with some active editing.

You my friend have some truth. The thing I made was attacked, and I made the comment they wanted me to make.

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.

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.

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