My Medium Wishlist
Bugs, features, and improvements I would like to see in 2019
Dear Medium,
I am an active writer and editor on your platform. I submit at least 2 things most weeks and some weeks I publish virtually every day. There are definitely good things about Medium: the community, the feedback, the publications for poetry. There are some things I wish you would fix. Consider the following to be my 2019 wish list.
- Please give us the ability to see what has been read on a given day. For active writers, it is virtually impossible to know what is being read every day without a ton of work. When I click on a column in the stats graph, it should open a new frame with the list of what’s been read that day.
- Give us a way to filter which writers and which subjects we get in our daily digests. At a minimum, give us the ability to have only writers we follow show in our daily digests once or twice a week. The way it is right now, I barely see anything from the writers I follow. Instead, I see a ton of stuff from writers I really don’t care about.
- While we are on the subject of daily digests: Please give me a way to say “no member’s only content” for my digests. Showing me the list of things I can’t read isn’t going to change my mind about becoming a member. But showing me pieces that are not locked will get me to read more!
- Fix the publish automatically bug for publications. What? You don’t know about this one. Surprised to hear that, since I know most editors are frustrated about it. When Medium went to the two step submission process, you made it impossible for editors to submit to their publications and not have the piece go live immediately. This means that if you are an editor on a publication, your piece can’t be held for future publication or for scheduled publication. As soon as it is submitted, it publishes. Pain in the behind, believe me.
- While we are talking about publications, how about making it possible for people to get publication letters every time they are sent? I write for over 20 publications. I follow close to 40 others. So why do I rarely see publication letters? I mean, I should at least see The Mission’s letter daily, plus at least a few others a week. I don’t I see The Mission’s letter on average twice a week. I receive about 3 other letters a week. I know more are being sent, I am just not getting them.
- Speaking of those letters… Make it easier to create them please? As an editor on two publications, I can say: The current process sucks.
- Make the app work as much like the website as possible. Especially for working with publications and submissions to publications. While you are at it, please make it possible to change tags when publishing from the app. Not everyone wants to use the same tags as the piece they are responding to.
- The new font is nice. Now, how about making it possible to really edit how a piece looks? Centering would be nice. Indented text would be nice. (Yes, I know indenting can be faked with non-breaking spaces. It’s not the same.) Choosing which font set is used would be nice.
- While we are on that point, please fix list numbering. If I need to add content between numbered paragraphs, I should be able to continue the numbering. #justsaying
- Finally: Make it possible for me to specify a footer to be added to every piece I write. Having to remember to add a chunk at the end of my pieces is something that just doesn’t happen. I would love to be able to send my readers to my Patreon page, but I don’t remember to do it about 100% of the time.
Now, Your Friends @ Medium and Medium Staff, I know you aren’t going to do all of these. I don’t expect you will do any of them. But feature fixes like these should be on the roadmap — and we all should know if you ever expect to implement them. (And that publication bug? That one you should fix right away… please!)
If you’ve read this far, let me know your thoughts. What would you add to this list? Are there things on my list you have work arounds for? Share your thoughts below!
