[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Why are people publishing FAQs/articles on M...
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Ask HN: Why are people publishing FAQs/articles on Medium instead
of Gist?
I've noticed a trend in technical material being authored on Medium
behind a registration wall. Are people really generating enough
revenue to warrant publishing tech articles on Medium to offset the
greater good of making the material broadly available? Gist offers
public visibility and commenting without the requisite barrier to
entry. Thoughts?
Author : mel_llaguno
Score : 12 points
Date : 2021-01-18 21:11 UTC (1 hours ago)
| uberman wrote:
| I don't have a Medium account and I don't like running into
| paywalls but monetization could potentially have very little to
| do with the motivation to use a publishing platform like Medium
| over what is essentially an orphaned single public commit.
| mel_llaguno wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree that Gists are `orphaned single public
| commits` as they have a number of features which encourage
| collaboration (commenting/stars/history/forking). My concern is
| that most tech articles represent a perspective at a point-in-
| time and that the broader community would benefit from a living
| document. YMMV ;-)
| softwaredoug wrote:
| If the goal of a blog is to get people to know you better, not
| just share knowledge, then gist isn't a great platform for that.
| People would rather have a blog with clearer branding and
| personality, that promises more polish, and an offers to give you
| many ways to get to know the blogger.
|
| I use gist for informal things I don't have time to turn into a
| great blog article yet. Or half constructed notes that can live
| in a pastebin.
|
| I guess I'm curious why medium is the only alternate you list to
| gist as opposed to creating your own blog outside of medium?
| mel_llaguno wrote:
| Mostly a question of simplicity. I don't want to spend a tonne
| of time maintaining a personal blog site if I can find a quick
| way to publish material quickly using gists with an editor
| (like Obsidian) which is tolerable ;-).
|
| I've used Jekyll before on github.io, but am looking for an
| even lighter-weight solution (if possible).
| dahdum wrote:
| You can open an article for no paywall on Medium, but they
| purposely make it difficult by requiring you to sign up for their
| partner program (and provide all your taxpayer / payment
| information) to do so.
|
| So I think it's a split between people who want to try and
| generate some revenue, and those that don't want to sign up for
| that program and are too used to Medium to switch away.
| frompdx wrote:
| I like gists and I have used them for years for my (non-medium)
| blog. I usually break down whatever I am explaining piece by
| piece and then include a link to a gist with the complete code
| for the reader.
| mel_llaguno wrote:
| Interesting. So how do you decide what to publish on Medium? Is
| it simply a distinction between `blog` content vs. technical
| docs, or something else?
| frompdx wrote:
| I don't use medium. My blog is self hosted and if I am
| breaking down some code I usually include a gist with the
| complete code.
| lostintangent wrote:
| I was asking a similar question for numerous use cases (e.g. code
| snippets, book reviews, notes). Gists are so broadly useful, but
| relatively few developers actually use them. Personally, I found
| that incorporating gists into my daily workflow just wasn't very
| convenient, and so I ended up creating a VS Code extension that
| allowed me to create, edit, and comment on gists within the
| editor: https://aka.ms/gistpad.
|
| I'm not sure if ease-of-use is a reason for others to not use
| gists more frequently, but I've definitely become a bit of a
| gists "advocate", after appreciating just how useful/flexible it
| is as a "developer cloud storage" solution.
| mel_llaguno wrote:
| I use Obsidian and want to incorporate it in with my Gist
| usage. Found this which might be helpful:
| https://github.com/defunkt/gist
|
| P.S. My biggest peeve with Gist is the missing dark mode :(.
| Otherwise, I find that the ability to use Markdown and embedded
| images in my gist's actually covers most of my
| documenting/blogging use case. Obsidian will hopefully address
| the dark mode issue.
| iandinwoodie wrote:
| Personally, I dislike how Gists are so isolated. I just created a
| public test Gist and can't seem to find a way to navigate to it
| when I view my GitHub profile from a private browser session.
| From my Gists profile there is a "View GitHub Profile" button,
| but I do not see a button to do the reverse.
|
| I think adding a "Gists" tab to GitHub profiles would be a nice
| way to increase accessibility and exposure.
|
| Additionally, I think that edits to a Gist should count as
| contributions. The current arrangement disincentives those who
| are concerned with contribution counts.
| mel_llaguno wrote:
| I agree that there is a disconnect between Github repos and
| Gists. Unifying them with Github profiles would probably
| increase both the visibility and adoption (particularly if they
| were listed with your repos).
| sitkack wrote:
| Searching your own gists is harder than search for a public
| one. I think it might be easier to make a gist repo and use
| comments for gists or the inline editor.
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(page generated 2021-01-18 23:02 UTC)