IMHO this Medium’s effort to produce growing quality contents, trying to reward more the high quality writers, it’s the holy grail of us knowledge hungry readers.
I really appreciate this effort, so I will try to addd my 2 cents to the cause.
Add a quantitative metric to the singole individual judgment it’s more or less the same result than ask the reader to chose a vote from 1 to 10, without bothering him to ponderate the value. The applause it’s the instinct version of that: don’t ponderate a vote, just keep clicking. Both produce the same effects about judging the quality of a content, I think. So I belive that the old heart’s system it’s ok (no need for a quantitative metric on the single click).
IMHO the key here is to assign a variable weight (or more than one variable weight to the same person, based on the argument of the content) to the person that express that single click of appreciation (a qualitative metric to the person that express this single click).
Example: A reader is interested in computer science contents. Every month that reader reads 100 articles on that argument on Medium. Every single appreciation click should be rated comparing it with most popular articles of that same argument (computer science in this case). If the reader have clicked the heart on 50 of those 100 articles, and of this 50 liked articles 25 are the most clicked articles, this single reader receive a coefficient of 0.5 (25 on 50, 50%) when he appreciate a computer science article. On the other hand, if this same reader reads only one content about, let’s say, philosofy, click the heart on that content, and that content it’s one of the most popular in its category, medium judgment system should take in account that this is an occasional reader on philosofy arguments, an those single appreciation of one of the most popular content on philosofy (1 on 1, 100%) shouldn’t have the same weight when the same reader appreciate contents on his preferred arguments (computer science).
I hope I have express my idea clearly enough (I’m not native english speaker), but don’t ask me how to do that.
