SAFE Network Dev Updates on Medium too

Marketing
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I have a suggestion to put the weekly SAFE Network Dev Updates on Medium too. I think that with a beautiful picture on top and the appropriate formatting will be able to reach out to new people. :slight_smile:

So do we want the weekly Dev Updates on Medium too?

  • Yes
  • No

0 voters

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I donā€™t have a strong opinion here, so Iā€™d like to know the reason why those who voted ā€˜noā€™ came to that decision.

Off the cuff on the positive side, it seems this would enable easier sharing of the update and would enhance the profile of the project. Currently I donā€™t see the negatives ā€¦

If you voted no or are inclined to, what are your reasons?

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I am not voting because I donā€™t know a few things and @TylerAbeoJordan this might help shed light on why others say no and of course there will be other reasons.

  • How much effort is it for Maidsafe to put the updates on medium?
  • Is weekly updates on Medium going to dilute the big announcements that Maidsafe make on Medium from time to time? To me this is important to know and I donā€™t know
  • Is there an area on the maidsafe medium page to point to the forum #development:updates category so people can come to this forum directly and get the updates?
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I voted ā€œNOā€ because I reckon they would start to drown out all the other perhaps more relevant articles there.

On the other hand I do see the value in having the weekly updates visible somewhere so that newcomers could think - ā€œhey, seems like there is very active and transparent development going on!ā€

edit- basically everything neo said.

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I voted ā€œYESā€ because for a new person the forum is something new to learn (interface, many different sections)ā€¦

There are many people who use Medium and are not members of this forum and accordingly it would be easier for them to see the updates thereā€¦

But of course Neo is right that this will reduce the visibility of important updates. But how much will reduce them?

In my opinion, not with much, but can bring more benefitsā€¦

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I scrolled down 50 posts in Maidsafe Medium page. It went down to ā€œSAFE Network Alpha Releaseā€ on Aug 12, 2016 or ~122 weeks ago.

That roughly means there will be a bit more than 2 weekly updates for every other article there.

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7

I voted no, though my opinion is not very strong. I mostly worried about the effort for the team, especially if people start to comment updates on the Medium too. Iā€™d rather see all the discussion in one place. Maybe I would vote yes, if the comments are disabled and people are directed to comment here on the forum.

Still, somehow my mild gut feeling is that it is not good idea to scatter this ā€œnot so importantā€ information too much.

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I voted yes. I wouldnā€™t reproduce the whole thing though, just a summary of the main points (3 minute read) each week with a link back to the forum post. Provided the time can be justified of course. I donā€™t see dilution being problem as the Medium channel isnā€™t a primary destination. Rather people will wind up there via links or search results.

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9

I voted no. Not a strong objection though.

Two reasons:

  • medium is a dark pattern and we donā€™t need to support it unless the benefit is significant (which doesnā€™t seem so)
  • duplication will help medium take search traffic away from the forum (hence I would prefer @JPLā€™s suggestion to have a short summary rather than the whole thing)

I also donā€™t use medium, so may not see the benefits. To me it is another Facebook surveillance capitalism play.

6 Likes
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Hi folks, just wanted to give my thoughts here. For all that itā€™s centralised etc, Iā€™m a fan of Medium - as a writing platform, itā€™s enjoyable to use and it is focused on promoting virality for the best messages in a way that the old MaidSafe blog wasnā€™t built to achieve. However, I donā€™t personally believe itā€™s the best place for the weekly Dev Updates for a number of reasons:

  1. Medium is a place for thoughtful, well-written essays / pieces that are more significant (as opposed to regular weekly pieces)
  2. If we went down this route, Marketing would need to take a far more active role in writing the weekly updates - yes weā€™d love to and weā€™re doing this already to some extent re the work thatā€™s carried out for prepping the weekly Dev videos - but creating written content that is of a higher quality than the weekly updates would inevitably add more into that weekly production bucket (meaning publication on Fri/Mon/Tues, depending on the topics involved) - and may in worst case, slow down the release of the weekly Dev Updates themselves (which nobody wants).
  3. We already pull together a monthly summary on Medium which should collate all of these weekly posts (albeit we really would like to focus on this & make it more valuable moving forwards)
  4. But the most important here in reality imo is the following one:-

If we put out weekly technical/staff etc updates on Medium then we risk starting to lose some of the more focused pieces of writing that we put out there (e.g. explaining the road to SAFE-Fleming, Dynamic Membership etc) - posts that we are spending quality time on and we want/hope that the community will support.

So, just a personal opinion and always open to discussion on this (and itā€™s worth saying that itā€™s far from my call alone) but

tl;dr

Iā€™m not sure that the Dev Updates are comprised of the sort of information that are best suited to long-form essay writing - are too frequent - and will come at a time cost that may risk impacting on the delivery of other things e.g. the videos

(but please do keep discussing this as itā€™s a fascinating topic to watch and learn what peopleā€™s opinions are :slight_smile: )

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The marketing team already highlight the big steps and topics that often come from the progress/updates we see here and I think to add in the update to medium would drown out the more polished content intended for the wider audience. I like the gumption but I definitely agree with Dug.

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Ok, so can the updates be published in another account ā€œSAFE Network Dev Updatesā€ to take advantage of the benefits described by @Antifragile?

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Here is a compromise solution:

Put the Maidsafe updates on the Medium website, but put all of the updates into one article. The article would have a brief introduction that tells the purpose of the weekly update and a brief introduction to the Maidsafe project. Each week, this part would stay the same. Then there would be a link to each weekā€™s update, most recent week at the top. When the new update comes, a new link would be added to the top of the list.

  1. It would not be a lot of maintenance for Maidsafe, they are just adding one link each week and the rest of the article stays the same. This could even be delegated to a lower level employee/forum user.
  2. It would not drown out the rest of the Maidsafe conversation, it would only be one article on Medium.
  3. It would steer Medium users to this forum, which is what we want.
4 Likes