Is the Internet’s metric for Quality broken?

I wrote this originally about Medium.com following my published essay on Hacker Noon (see footnotes), but on second view realized that there is a larger theme: Medium Claps can easily be replaced by Facebook likes, Netflix ThumbsUp, or you name it.

Medium.com Clap System

Looking at the results of my published Medium essay it strikes me odd to see so many very enthusiastic people clapping on my essay (sometimes 50 times), when all I get in return is a mere 7 followers who are interested in reading my future essays. A closer examination revealed several readers who are neither followers of Hacker Noon nor myself. ???

Never-ending cycle

For me, Medium, just like Netflix, Yahoo, and many others, has joined a list of deteriorating technologies I once trusted. And it is deteriorating only to soon be replaced by another brand. Remember the old story:

* Hotmail is introduced - we love it!

* Hotmail is scaled.

* People abandon Hotmail in droves for new Google alternatives.

What I personally like to see is complexity of choices and their richness. For me the “complexity” of Medium’s original recommendation system provided a plurality of responses. Same with Netflix’s old rating system. Perhaps we need more people like Craig Newmark from Craig’s List . We need more people to recognize quality when they have found it; and more importantly to recognize when to STOP.

On Quality Today

Read Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance — it’s a very revealing book. It has been more than 40 years since Pirsig’s book was published. Pirsig’s focus in the book appears to centered around what actually defines quality. Today, the issue is no longer only about the emergence of quality. Steve Jobs and the likes have really nailed that one on the head. The real issue now is:

How do you maintain The Quality? How do we maintain Quality Internet?

https://hackernoon.com/why-does-the-boss-want-you-to-build-that-software-in-house-84c0c2afeb4d