I’ve been pondering the new metrics since the announcement. Here’s my .02 (that an article earned):
I’m all for change and all for improving the system. But this is not going to work. I have noticed that I am no longer doing what I used to do: reading an article through and then deciding how I felt about it: Was the writing well done? Did the body reflect the title? Did I feel inspired to clap 50 times, comment, and share?
No. I am no longer doing that. Because my judgmental self doesn’t want to support mediocre writing when there are so many awesome writers on Medium, I stop reading after the first few sentences so that I am not supporting less than (in my opinion, I know) stellar writing. You have taken away my willingness to read a fledgling writer to see if perhaps they picked up steam later on and made a good point. I have to quickly exit their story and move onto someone else’s. Talk about putting the pressure on a reader.
Next, I was surprised to see that no where are you doing what I understood was the meat of the pay program when it first began (that I LOVED): Which was allocating funds based on (being a paid member — apparently that doesn’t matter either) how often YOU read, share, comment and actively support fellow writers. Perhaps this changed a while ago and I missed it. Suddenly the writers who follow 60 people but are followed by 60K people make sense. They don’t have to spend any time supporting others the way many of us happily do in order to feel part of the Medium community. Nope, they spend all their time putting out content. That’s just nasty.
I realize the site is experiencing growing pains. But perhaps a solution is to poll readers and writers and solicit suggestions on what metrics make sense to us. Judging an article by the time someone spends reading it is just bizzare. And way Big Brother.
