Claps don’t indicate quality. They indicate read this, liked this, want to share on my network. And anyone can clap whether they know quality writing or not. More claps from one person isn’t that helpful either. It basically says ‘oh let’s give this story bunches of claps’. There’s not scale of the meaning of claps. Now I understand that Medium collects relational data from users and from there manipulates the claps into it, but there isn’t a ‘deep’ explanation to guarantee this will be consistent nor match the reader’s reason for the clap.
I suggest an algorithm such as those used on “I Write Like”. Run the algorithm on random sections of a story that determine the different ‘write like’ author matching, add that data to a lookup table of characteristics of those writers that includes a rating scale of how closely these writers match the analysis of the Medium story, create a rating synopsis to place with each story, and update the big data and look up tables with comments from readers that is also run through a look-up table that contains review characteristics that can be shown in the synopsis or blended into the ‘write like’ tables. You’ll build a Medium Story Quality System that is more accurate, reliable, consistent, dependable and valid over time that will speak directly of the quality of a Medium story.
