If you pick software based on your opinion of the attitude of the authors, rather than its actual qualities, you're going to make a lot of mistakes.
Do you have any opinion about Svbtle itself, incidentally? Have you tried using it? What do you feel are its advantages and disadvantages compared to Medium?
I would like to clarify my comment as some people has misinterpreted what I actually meant. I think Svbtle is great, but at the same time, how is it any different to that of other blog platforms that tout themselves as having a clean interface for writing content? We have Medium, Ghost, Tumblr and even Quora. The competitive edge that Svbtle had was its exclusivity, an edge they've now lost by opening it up.
I wasn't attacking Dustin Curtis, I don't know him, I know of him and I have no problem with him whatsoever. I think people are too quick when it comes to interpreting the intent of someone else's words. But that's understandable as gauging intent of words without the voice can be very difficult and easy to misinterpret, especially on the Internet and a site like Hacker News.
What I meant by elitist was a blogging platform that only allowed people that Dustin or whoever else hand-picked and determined were good enough to be allowed to use and publish on the Svbtle platform is in my opinion quite an elitist thing to do. "I think you're good enough to use my website" it's like a tech company like Apple choosing who gets to use their products and who doesn't based on how they look or where they live.
At the same time, it's Dustin's right to choose who uses Svbtle, it was a unique take on blogging when it made its debut and its his darling. I won't judge him for it, but I standby my choice of words calling his approach an elitist attitude. That's just my opinion, don't hate on me for it.
I haven't used Svbtle long enough to form a substantial opinion as I already use Medium and am active on Quora, but what I've seen is quite nice. The interface is great, I've always been a fan of the overall aesthetic of the site from day one. I've got nothing bad to say about it. It's just another blogging platform to me, a well-built one.
However, I don't think Svbtle has any competitive edge left to compete with other established players in the competitive blogging platform niche. It's an overdone thing, even Ghost has failed to live up to its own hype as a blogging platform because people are used to the likes of Wordpress and don't want to use something new and unknown. Perhaps if Svbtle were to open source itself like Wordpress they might be able to compete in the space.
I believe my comment was mostly fair, I am sorry if I offended anyone, but honesty is the best policy. If I called Dustin Curtis a fat elitist slob then maybe all of the disdain in the comments beneath me would be warranted.
I feel the exact same way, and did when I first heard of Svbtle.
In fact, in some small way, even when I get linked to a post on an Svbtle-hosted blog, I get an off putting feeling just knowing that this was one of those people who was "better" than me, since they were allowed to have a Svbtle blog, and I was not. I often even lost interest in the author's content because of this nagging feeling.
Running a beta period to test your theories is one thing, but the entire platform was packaged and advertised as a walled garden for those whom were better than the rest of us. This is what soured it for me.
It was even more infuriating because I actually LOVED the features they were previewing.
I honestly don't understand the point of a "walled garden" blog, aside from perhaps a curation mechanic. If I were to post on there among all the great writers on the site, still nobody would have seen my work. So rather than I still a sense of inferiority into, well, everyone, why not just make it open and feature the best writers? Win-win. And if I'm not mistaken, that's Medium's approach, is it not?
Svbtle and Medium both started out as invitation-only exclusive clubs; you could submit your email address to a sign-up form on Medium, but invitations were prioritized by, essentially, how recognized your writing was to start with. There's nothing wrong with this, but I think people imagine a greater gulf existed between the two services than there actually was. The difference is mostly that Medium opened up faster.
I remain somewhat on the fence about Svbtle. I admire much of it but there's a rather unrelating sameness starting to manifest itself in the web design world--the pastels, rounded corners and dropped vowels of a few years ago have given way to monochrome color schemes, large text, and vast swaths of whitespace. While this is an improvement in readability, the biggest difference between Medium and Svbtle for readers rather than authors is serif text vs. sans serif, and that Medium appears to have better image handling.
there's a rather unrelating sameness starting to manifest itself in the web design world--the pastels, rounded corners and dropped vowels of a few years ago have given way to monochrome color schemes, large text, and vast swaths of whitespace
To their credit, they were on this trend early. But, I agree...it has lost any sort of cachet it might have had, designwise. Unfortunately, for them perhaps.
The social-cachet-to-build-buzz to then sell-out business plan. Seems to be heading into its final phase with indeterminate success on the first two.
Elitism doesn't need to carry any sort of value judgment. You don't allow homeless people in your house, do you? That makes you elitist for a slightly broader definition -- you share the company of employed/housed people only. What else do you call a policy of only allowing hand-chosen authors to use a platform you've publicly touted? Selective, I suppose.
There's also the matter of Dustin Curtis' negative reaction to the creation of WP themes and other Svbtle lookalikes, which many people felt was undue/misplaced.
Not sure how this could be interpreted in any other way whatsoever.
This is unfair, and lacks imagination.
CEO X can run a company with an "elitist" strategy or not. And he can be critiqued for that strategy, or not. It is a giant leap (of bad logic) to jump to personal conclusions about CEO X based on his strategy. You are making that poor leap. The poster was trying to not due this, to his credit.
To get into the linguistic nitty-gritty, perhaps he could have said "elitist strategy". But the point was that Dustin's execution, and the decisions behind it, were based on the marketability of exclusion. The point wasn't that Dustin thinks he is better than others and therefore should be judged negatively.
Unfortunately, the word 'elitist' has pretty strong negative connotations. It's definitely enough calling someone an elitist to be considered personal invective, though I recognise that this was not your intent.
Unfortunately, the word 'elitist' has pretty strong negative connotations.
There are various flavours of elitism, and frankly the political ones are pretty remote from the run-of-the mill business strategy that inspires many, including the likes of Svbtle. You can read up all about in this look at the marketing[1] of nightlife in NYC.
Nope, it has plenty of subtle features that I prefer and the more I use it, the more I grow attached to it. I think it is a great product because it holds true to its promise of helping users focus on expressing their ideas.
If the attitude of the author is "invitation only", then you don't get the luxury of choice if you're not invited - that particular attitude trumps any quality argument.
Edit: I'm not really familiar with the particular politics here, but attitude of authors is not a trivial thing. Similarly, the wealth of GPL/BSD/MIT-licensed software that we all benefit from is strongly linked to the attitude of the authors.
>If you pick software based on your opinion of the attitude of the authors, rather than its actual qualities, you're going to make a lot of mistakes.
Disagree.
I don't like the way Microsoft does business, and I think Steve Ballmer is an egotistical prick, so I don't buy their products. I don't use Windows on my devices (including phone), I don't use Skype, I don't own an xbox and therefore I don't use xbox live, etc.
I'm not interested in the "actual qualities" of Windows Phone or Metro UI because I don't want to support Microsoft with my dollars.
I don't know much at all about RMS, but I will agree that Linus is a jerk.
The difference of course is that Linus doesn't head a company that engages in predatory business practices, ships spyware and DRM (malware) in its operating systems, etc.
So I can overlook the fact that Linus occasionally says mean things to people over the internet. I don't think Linus has ever thrown a chair across his office when someone wanted to leave Linux. Can't say the same for Ballmer, who has very real personality issues: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR-P6HPZgMs
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Finally, I know that this comments+karma format encourages extreme pedantry so let me pre-empt you:
The fact that I choose not to use Microsoft products because I don't like Microsoft or Ballmer doesn't mean I am required to abstain from ALL products whose authors have engaged in behaviour I don't like.
More often than not it's a "lesser of $num evils" situation.
The claim was that you're prone to making mistakes if you judge software by the traits of the authors. How do you know that you haven't made a mistake?
Disregarding that, strictly speaking, the onus is on pg to show that you made a mistake (if this were a debate)
In general, statements and actions of the authors do seem to be extremely irrelevant components of software quality.
Err, a) you clearly cared enough to respond this far, and b) the question is how do you know that you have not made a mistake not do you care if someone else thinks you've made a mistake
> how do you know that you have not made a mistake
I guess I just don't understand the purpose of asking this.
Because my operating system choice hasn't let me down or hindered me in any significant way?
I gave the "I don't care" response because I don't know how else to answer your question. "a mistake" is so nebulously defined that in this context it has nearly no meaning to me. Can you give an example of what you mean when you say "a mistake"?
The whole RMS is only a dick for those that don't understand him doesn't work around here. You just have to accept that many people understand him and his motives and think he's a dick.
There needs to be a "free software extremist" though. That role is necessary so that when someone like myself stakes out a less-extreme position I can't help but seem reasonable in comparison.
I accept that many people, despite a longstanding superficial familiarity with RMS and his work, are nevertheless cretinous ingrates who don't understand the first thing about software freedom or RMS's role in preserving same.
"His motives"? Really? What are you thinking here? Fame? Fortune? Pull the other one.
I agree with this in concept: your money is your economic power, and that economic power supports the people you spend it on, including their actions and attitudes. You are handing over the economic power for them to continue with whatever behaviour you dislike.
While I agree with pg in that perhaps this shouldn't be your first consideration in picking software, there clearly is significant reason to consider your opinion of the authors.
I think there are many better reasons than those to base your decision on what to use or not to use. To each their own, of course, but it would take a really strong, personal dislike of someone for that dislike to prevent me from using quality products (not saying that MS's products are or aren't quality). And not knowing any of the people involved personally, I can't really form such a strong personal judgment.
If I go to a restaurant with amazing food, and I find that the owner is an asshole, it's completely reasonable to not give them my business anymore. How is it any different with software?
I think it's reasonable, but that doesn't mean it's wise. In software (vs food), the things you choose can impact your bottom line, and if you let your dislike of the authors get in the way of your decisions you could end up hurting yourself. That's not to say you shouldn't weigh the ethical implications of your choices, just that "the creator is a dick" is pretty trivial as far as ethical implications go.
But that's not really relevant here. It's a blogging platform among a sea of blogging platforms.
What's a good example of software made by dicks, such that not using it will kill your business? I'm just interested in one example to think about this.
They're pretty different actually. Medium posts feel like posting on Medium, Svtble feels like my blog and my voice. You can't design or monetize it, but that's not my goal when writing - it's about my words. Svtble is all about my words, Medium is all about Medium.
I always write on Svtble (because it's better and it's mine) and sometimes post on it later as a Medium post so I can submit to collections. But they are NOT one in the same, not at all.
Honestly, they're very similar. Medium feels much more polished. Svbtle has the cool kudos, color picker and brain-dump-title-post-draft maker thing going on. But that's it. Both have the idea of collections or magazines. I feel like Svbtle did wait waaaay to long to open this up. They don't offer anything starkly different from Medium. They should have been monetizing a while ago. Why the wait?
Actually, I take care not to use any quality software, but quality software that isn't written by douchebag(s). This, of course, rules out many great applications, but I the metric ton of smugness I get in return is worth it.
Do you have any opinion about Svbtle itself, incidentally? Have you tried using it? What do you feel are its advantages and disadvantages compared to Medium?