Sarah Gray
Aug 23, 2017 · 1 min read

To be fair to Medium, it is relatively to straightforward to account for discrepancies in clapping behavior and weight the stats accordingly… if you have sufficient data from the individual and others.

You’d also need consistency in individual clapping behavior. If I sometimes clap 20 times for an article I love, and sometimes clap 40 times for an article I love, then I’m unwittingly giving different feedback to articles that I love equally. An algorithm can’t pick up on that discrepancy easily… it gets ridiculous when the same “amazing” reaction can yield 5, 13, 27, or 50 claps depending on a bunch of unrelated factors (mood, energy level, etc).

The best way for me to make sure that my claps are giving authors the correct indication of exactly how much I liked their articles is to deliberately monitor my own clapping and develop a scale to follow. That is tedious.

Or, instead of changing my behavior to accommodate an insultingly juvenile feature of questionable value, I could just not.

Call it whatever you want. 1 click is the best anyone will get out of me.

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    Sarah Gray

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