John S. James
Aug 27, 2017 · 1 min read

I like the clap because it’s different — making it clear that you are not adding to Facebook likes, for example.

But to a casual user, it’s not clear what’s the expectation about clapping once vs. more than once. If you like it a lot, is 10 claps OK? Clearly 500 would not be — Medium could analyze that appropriately, but it would be complicated to give readers tools to do so.

I do like the circle — e.g. counterclockwise to give a negative number, if you decide to allow that. I think that negative ratings are fine as long as they do not subtract from the positive ones , and vice versa— give readers both scores. Bots and warmbots (persons paid for bot-like behavior) will be a problem, but no more than they already are.

)

    John S. James

    Written by

    Published AIDS Treatment News for 20 years starting in 1986 (see http://nyti.ms/1z0xaUs); now @AgeTreatment looks at biomedical aging research and elder health.