Paywalls are generally frustrating, particularly as a mechanism for viral growth. Having users pay directly instead of having it run through ads could be a good thing (Netflix, etc. is generally well liked by consumers) but it's not content that gets consistently linked to.
The big issue is that the software ecosystem runs on widely shared, free and open content. We just couldn't do our jobs the same way if GitHub issues or Stack Overflow posts wound up getting paywalled.
So yeah, don't link to paywalled stuff. Stack Overflow has been growing their Stack Overflow for Teams line of business which offers a private version of the service for big companies to create an internal knowledge-base, and this works in complement to the free Q&A service. I'm pleased with that approach.
One of the most salient features of our Tech Hiring culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted.
Versatile software engineer with a background in .NET consulting and CMS development. Working on regaining my embedded development skills to get more involved with IoT opportunities.
There's an extension for Chrome (and Firefox too, if I am not mistaken) called Make Medium Readable Again which decrapifies their UI. I still am against the whole idea of the paywall. I applaud the Dev.TO staff (along with the entire awesome community) for finding creative ways to pay the bills without shoving advertisements in or faces repeatedly
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
You can still read Medium without their app, but the page layout is pretty dreadful (who knows: maybe it's dreadful in the app, too, but I'll never know).
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
I've been a professional C, Perl, PHP and Python developer.
I'm an ex-sysadmin from the late 20th century.
These days I do more Javascript and CSS and whatnot, and promote UX and accessibility.
I was just hit with a paywall the other day thinking, I rarely read Medium posts and was quite annoyed. I don't contribute to medium any longer because of this single reason.
I'm a developer-turned-business owner who loves to explore the right tools for the job. I enjoy writing and documenting my journey. I use code as one of the tools to solve real problems.
Been using UNIX since the late 80s; Linux since the mid-90s; virtualization since the early 2000s and spent the past few years working in the cloud space.
Location
Alexandria, VA, USA
Education
B.S. Psychology from Pennsylvania State University
Top comments (15)
Most folks in this thread have probably already read this post, but I'll link it because it touches on this...
Medium Was Never Meant to Be a Part of the Developer Ecosystem
Ben Halpern ・ Jun 3 '19 ・ 5 min read
Paywalls are generally frustrating, particularly as a mechanism for viral growth. Having users pay directly instead of having it run through ads could be a good thing (Netflix, etc. is generally well liked by consumers) but it's not content that gets consistently linked to.
The big issue is that the software ecosystem runs on widely shared, free and open content. We just couldn't do our jobs the same way if GitHub issues or Stack Overflow posts wound up getting paywalled.
So yeah, don't link to paywalled stuff. Stack Overflow has been growing their Stack Overflow for Teams line of business which offers a private version of the service for big companies to create an internal knowledge-base, and this works in complement to the free Q&A service. I'm pleased with that approach.
Also, no links to any article, I don't think
dev.to
should become a link aggregator, content should be posted here so it can be discussed here.Yeah. Ideally dont post medium links at all.
It is very hostile, especially on mobile where i get redirected to some non-existing "medium://" url that shows me 404 because i dont have their app.
I refuse to install their BS app to read web. I wish all technical writings moved to dev.to.
From the writer side of things, medium proposes Friend links to avoid this problem.
But the best solution by far is to publish the same article on dev.to and share that link.
prepend the url with outline.com and you can read it now
I wish there was a twitter bot that unmediums links and comments underneath. Its impossible to read medium on mobile without their sucky app.
There's an extension for Chrome (and Firefox too, if I am not mistaken) called Make Medium Readable Again which decrapifies their UI. I still am against the whole idea of the paywall. I applaud the Dev.TO staff (along with the entire awesome community) for finding creative ways to pay the bills without shoving advertisements in or faces repeatedly
You can still read Medium without their app, but the page layout is pretty dreadful (who knows: maybe it's dreadful in the app, too, but I'll never know).
No, i cant. It literally redirects me to
medium://blabla
url after 1 second after i load their page.Oh. Weird. What phone/OS do you have?
Android (8?), opera flow. I think its called flow ;)
Unless it's just a footnote or citation to a proper post, and is well-signposted as external and restricted.
I was just hit with a paywall the other day thinking, I rarely read Medium posts and was quite annoyed. I don't contribute to medium any longer because of this single reason.
Exactly this! I moved everything to my personal blog when this started to become a thing.
It's kind of like my Google Tiles: whenever a tile takes me to a site that is paywalled, I have two reactions: