“Discovery feels too much like a popularity contest right now, and popularity is so seldom a good indicator of quality.”

I’ve been saying this for months and began feeling like I was wasting my breath. It’s good to see someone else say this. (Will Medium ever listen?)

“I don’t know if the front page feed was ever intended to be viewed as a mechanism for discovery.”

It obviously wasn’t. The front page feed is designed to keep focus on a very narrow segment of the Medium-sphere. It endeavors to thwart discovery. It is quite literally a feed just like a trough used to feed cattle.

“But just in case, I want to note that I don’t want these different ways of organizing stories mixed together.”

I so thoroughly agree with this! Medium seems rather emphatic about not changing its feed algorithm and that’s fine. It seems rather emphatic about not including discovery in that algorithm and that’s fine. But why can’t we have a new, separate feed that is solely focused on discovery? I communicated with a Medium staffer about this several months ago and he assured me that Medium was considering this but absolutely nothing has been done about it since then. It seems to go against their vision.

I suggested a separate live, real-time feed of Medium posts as they were being posted (like some social media sites have) but Medium seems vehemently opposed to such an idea. This is the most democratically based feed that is not driven by popularity or agenda or personal networks. EVERYONE who posts on Medium will appear in this feed, even if only for 15 minutes. It is a feed in which EVERYONE has at least a glimmer of a chance of being discovered. It is a feed in which EVERYONE has at least a glimmer of a chance of discovering something NEW and exciting and different and written by someone outside of the top 5% who regularly appear in the other front page feed over and over and over again.

I have no idea why Medium is so steadfastly against such an idea. I have no idea why they are so against the notion of discovery. To them, discovery is strictly the reader’s responsibility and they just don’t want to make it easy. They want the reader to spend hours doing searches through tags, which, right now, is the only available option for discovery. They seem hellbent on discouraging discovery and focusing everyone’s attention on what is fed to them in the trough.

To me, this is the most annoying and detracting and dis-empowering and disheartening problem Medium has and it seems to be a problem that Medium is utterly ignoring, despite the numerous on-going posts by Medium users trying to bring this glaring problem to the attention of Medium. “Discovery,” apparently is a dirty, filthy word to Medium. If this could only change, Medium would soar beyond its wildest dreams.

But they just won’t listen……