What are your “Claps” criteria?

How do you decide how many Claps you will award a story?

Eleanor Annay
ILLUMINATION

--

Photo by Daniel Lincoln on Unsplash

I know that claps no longer mean a lot here, but it is nice to see the number going up. Similar to when you post a photo on Instagram or a video on TikTok and you watch the number of likes rising. It’s nice to be “appreciated” in that way.

Something I’ve noticed is that number of claps doesn’t necessarily mean that the story is good. There are a bunch of stories with little to no claps that are amazing, and on the other side, stories with a bunch of claps that are not that good. I guess it depends on who wrote them. One must be fond of clapping more to a top writer than a newer one. Or maybe there is something else I’m not seeing or knowing.

When it comes to giving claps, I don’t have set criteria. I won’t clap to some stories, some will get 5 claps, others more. I rarely give 50 claps, but if a story is amazing and thought-provoking, it gets 50 claps from me. I decide on the spot how many claps I’ll give to the story I’m reading.

One thing I avoid doing is giving less than 5 claps. In my opinion, it’s better not to clap than to give 1. Also, I think giving a clap is disrespectful to the writer. Is the story that bad that you give it one clap? I know that on social media platforms you can give one like, but when you have…

--

--