Comment by djhworld | Hacker News Reader

Comment by djhworld | Hacker News Reader

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I think medium has some cool features like the "claps", comment boxes and story analytics. There's a lot of stuff that that just works out of the box

However I really dislike syndicating my blog to it because the formatting is so limited. You cannot do bullet point lists for example, which makes it a huge pain having to tinker with your existing post to reformat it for medium.

Nowadays I just syndicate an introduction to the post and a "click here to continue reading" hyperlink to my actual blog. Which is a rubbish experience for Medium users.

I'm wondering if there's a decentralised version of a blogging network, where users host their blog themselves, with the social features like claps/comments wrapped around it, plus a bit of a 'recommendation' system for other posts in the network to get that network of writers feel.

I know disqus exists but it's not quite the same

You actually can do bullet points if you type '*' or '-' and then a space. For some reason, they have a few markdown-like formatting features that aren't shown in the popup editing bar.

Also, about the recommendation system for self-hosted content, I've seen a few sites that link to HN or Reddit for comments. Upvotes can stand in for "claps", and posting on HN or Reddit makes your article discoverable.

Sorry, you are right, I misremembered, I think I meant further indentation of bullet point lists is not supported, so only 1 level of indentation is supported.

I think linking to HN/reddit is fine but that means leaving the original site where you were consuming the content. I was more thinking along the lines of the social features would be embedded in your blog, and would act as part of a bigger network.

Yes they have this claps feature. Isn't it weird, like, cheating, that one can clap 50 times for the same story?

I'm wondering if Medium in this way fools people into thinking their / others stories are more popular, than what they actually are? And in that way Medium thinks Medium will get more traction? Or why allow that many claps and not show # clappers?

I clapped 50 times for this story "Medium is a poor choice for blogging".

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