<story><title>Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain</title><url>https://arslan.io/2017/07/30/why-i-left-medium-and-moved-back-to-my-own-domain/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>untog</author><text>I suspect it&amp;#x27;s because they didn&amp;#x27;t&amp;#x2F;don&amp;#x27;t want people to comment in the usual way - you can highlight text on an article and leave short comments in the relevant place if you want to do that.&lt;p&gt;I think the comments section at the end was intended more as a place for lengthy reaction posts. It&amp;#x27;s why comments have &amp;quot;recommend&amp;quot; rather than &amp;quot;like&amp;quot; as a button. I might &amp;quot;like&amp;quot; someone saying &amp;quot;great post!&amp;quot; but I&amp;#x27;m not going to &amp;quot;recommend&amp;quot; it.&lt;p&gt;It often feels like Medium has made a product for what they want online discourse to be, rather than what it actually is. I don&amp;#x27;t hate them for trying.</text></item><item><author>tyingq</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Writing comments to Medium posts feels awkward because each comment is treated as a blog post.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is also awkward from the reader point of view.  Trying to follow a comment chain on medium is frustrating as it only shows the first level, diving in switches pages, and often, a need to press a second &amp;quot;load all comments&amp;quot; button.  Then the back button to wind your way back up.&lt;p&gt;Is there some sound reasoning for why it was set up this way?  Some benefit I&amp;#x27;m not seeing?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>SyneRyder</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;gt; I think the comments section at the end was intended more as a place for lengthy reaction posts... It often feels like Medium has made a product for what they want online discourse to be, rather than what it actually is.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s exactly it.  Medium was developed to solve online journalism, and instead of ranking articles &amp;amp; comments by clicks &amp;amp; pageviews (leading to clickbait), their metric is Total Time Reading, on the assumption that people won&amp;#x27;t keep reading an article they don&amp;#x27;t enjoy or find useful.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a bit more info on the Business Insider interview with Ev Williams:
&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com.au&amp;#x2F;inside-the-meltdown-of-evan-williams-startup-medium-2017-2?r=US&amp;amp;IR=T&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.businessinsider.com.au&amp;#x2F;inside-the-meltdown-of-ev...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;“The state of tech blogs is atrocious. It’s utter crap,” he told Bloomberg’s Brad Stone in 2013. “They create a culture that is superficial and fetishizing and rewarding the wrong things and reinforcing values that are self-destructive and unsustainable.” .... His idea back then was an algorithm that recommended high-quality stories not based on clicks, but on how much time people spent reading them.&lt;/i&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Why I left Medium and moved back to my own domain</title><url>https://arslan.io/2017/07/30/why-i-left-medium-and-moved-back-to-my-own-domain/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>untog</author><text>I suspect it&amp;#x27;s because they didn&amp;#x27;t&amp;#x2F;don&amp;#x27;t want people to comment in the usual way - you can highlight text on an article and leave short comments in the relevant place if you want to do that.&lt;p&gt;I think the comments section at the end was intended more as a place for lengthy reaction posts. It&amp;#x27;s why comments have &amp;quot;recommend&amp;quot; rather than &amp;quot;like&amp;quot; as a button. I might &amp;quot;like&amp;quot; someone saying &amp;quot;great post!&amp;quot; but I&amp;#x27;m not going to &amp;quot;recommend&amp;quot; it.&lt;p&gt;It often feels like Medium has made a product for what they want online discourse to be, rather than what it actually is. I don&amp;#x27;t hate them for trying.</text></item><item><author>tyingq</author><text>&lt;i&gt;&amp;quot;Writing comments to Medium posts feels awkward because each comment is treated as a blog post.&amp;quot;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;This is also awkward from the reader point of view.  Trying to follow a comment chain on medium is frustrating as it only shows the first level, diving in switches pages, and often, a need to press a second &amp;quot;load all comments&amp;quot; button.  Then the back button to wind your way back up.&lt;p&gt;Is there some sound reasoning for why it was set up this way?  Some benefit I&amp;#x27;m not seeing?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>freehunter</author><text>Commenting on articles is a terrible method of interaction. Anti-spam is hard, and spammers always win. Trolls always win. Comments rarely add much to the discussion from the article, and they&amp;#x27;re often hard to follow. There&amp;#x27;s no reason to leave a comment saying &amp;quot;great post!&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s spam. It&amp;#x27;s unnecessary.&lt;p&gt;Blogs are a wholly inappropriate place for back-and-forth discourse to happen simply because if I have a blog, it&amp;#x27;s my blog. It&amp;#x27;s not a discussion board. I inherently have the advantage, I control the conversation, and it&amp;#x27;s all about me. I have the ability to delete comments I disagree with. That&amp;#x27;s not discourse, that&amp;#x27;s an echo chamber.&lt;p&gt;I completely agree with Medium. Just because blog posts have historically had comments doesn&amp;#x27;t mean it&amp;#x27;s the right choice. The minute people accepted &amp;quot;pingbacks&amp;quot; as a valid form of comment was the moment comments died. V!AGR@ and P3N15 type spam sealed the deal.</text></comment>