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Abstract

to-know">Medium Curation guidelines</a> talked about “14 days” as the amount of time a story usually takes to be reviewed by curators — don’t look for this in the link as this was taken OFF in the latest Oct 2 update</li><li>Here is my understanding of Medium Curation — every story first goes through a thorough algorithm that checks for any violations of the “curation guidelines” and if there are any you were quick to get a “Not distributed in Topics” message. However, clicking on a little “?” also took you to the curation guidelines link indicating you violated something</li><li>Once you met the algorithm’s filter, the expectation was for a curator to manually review your story and see if it was worthy of distribution across topics. If it was, you’d get the much-awaited “Distributed in topic 1, topic 2…….” on your story, and if not then you’d get “Not Distributed in Topics”</li><li>Until you got reviewed by a curator, your story continued to show a message “Hang tight, we’re still processing your story” or something to that effect.</li><li>However, with the increase in volumes and no corresponding increase in the number of curators (understandably), the number of stories that were stuck at “Processing” increased, and in the end, they moved to a “Not Distributed in Topics”. But there was a difference.</li><li>Now the “?” next to this said that “the story may be reviewed by curators at a later time for further distribution.” This, to me, essentially meant that due to the volumes, the story never was reviewed by a human i.e. the curators and so the result is a “Can’t Say” but not a Yes or a No.</li></ul>What the latest changes mean is that while curation will continue to happen in the backend — Medium is making no promises or giving no timelines to its writers. It means that every story may NOT get a fair shot at curation, even though curation will continue to exist. While you can’t fault Medium for being unable to review the HUGE volumes of stories, is this still fair?I don’t think so.For veteran writers or those who get lucky with a few viral / semi-viral stories early, the followers are a big enough number to give them sustained readership. But for new writers, this means an increased reliance on publications and a lot of luck to gain new readers and hence followers.To me, this steals not just a big opportunity for a fair assessment and potential curation from new writers and old writers alike but also takes away that “thrill” and “challenge” of achieving curation — because while you will still be curated, rejection won’t necessarily mean you weren't good enough, it may often mean you just weren’t lucky enough to be reviewed.I am an editor at ILLUMINATION. Curation is close to our heart. We amplify curated stories of our writers and keep them <a href="https://medium.com/illumination-curated">in a special collection</a>. We are helping our writers <a href="https://readmedium.com/self-nomination-for-curation-3a08385aae56">self-nominate their stories for publication level curation</a>.

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Curation is important to writers whether it is by Medium or publications.<h1 id="eba5">Focus on Followers — Is It Really Relational?</h1>For any of you who are on a handful of Facebook groups about Medium and blogging in general, you’d know the unfortunate practice of “follow for follow”. Luckily, Medium doesn’t fully work that way, and most writers worth their salt don’t fall for that trap. Yet, getting 1000 followers by following 2000 people and hoping for half of them to follow you back is a toxic thing.Why? Because none of those “follows” from you to them and them back to you are relational. They’re still all transactional. But do I blame these people? Not really, because when you’re vying for that extra set of eyes to fall on your story, and HOPE that it catches their fancy enough to get a “read” and hence some “read time” what else are you to expect?Also, writers who have been on Medium for long enough or have built a strong follower base are bound to continue to grow as a compounding effect, while those struggling to take off will further struggle, because the number of “new” eyes that see their content will now be limited.<h1 id="5852">Enough of Criticism — Is There a Creative Solution?</h1>By the System, For the System.Like no other platform, Medium has willing writers and talented people wanting to support each other. I am lucky to be part of one such group at <a href="https://medium.com/illumination">Illumination</a>. We all know there are publications like The Ascent, P.S. I Love You, The Writer’s Cooperative, who all have very high standards on their specific topics of expertise, and have a “tie-up” with Medium in terms of Curation.So if you’re good enough to publish with them, you get curated automatically.I think that is a masterstroke and a perfectly good way of leveraging the strength of the platform for the betterment of the platform.While the handful of official “Medium Curators” can’t possibly review all stories, there is a case to be made to increase the number of curators by collaborating with those who really form the platform.That and technology. In a world of AI and Machine Learning, there is surely room to make the algorithms more stringent and capable of doing a stricter first filter. There is SO MUCH plagiarism on Medium that should ideally be caught and not even allowed to be published — let alone consume precious readers’ time and hence also generate money for the content thieves that write those pieces.My two cents to the powers that be would be that hundreds of thousands of writers and readers have put their faith and trust in you as a platform. Don’t disappoint them by shying away from this added responsibility from your recent exponential growth. Instead, leverage them, and the strength that comes with so many exceptional minds coming together, and use it to keep this platform the amazing intellectual melting pot that it is.</article></body>

Dear Medium — With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

The latest updates raise some questions that need answering

The latest changes on Medium have had their fair share of analysis and have received both a positive and negative reception. That is quite expected with a platform of the scale and significance of Medium.

While Medium has been around for many years, 2020 has been a landmark year with the number of people — both readers and writers seeing an exponential rise. I am one of those new members who has thoroughly enjoyed the ride so far — having written close to 100 stories in close to 3 months on Medium.

Like most things I do, I’ve put in sincere effort to understand the workings of Medium as much as possible, barring some nuances that I am admittedly unaware of still, and some things that no one has really figured out.

Yet, the latest changes have made me realize some stark observations that I’ve felt haven’t been spoken about enough. And from my experiences as an editor, I’ve noticed Medium does a decent job of listening to its members — so if anything, this is constructive feedback from a new but hoping-to-be-here-for-the-long-haul writer and reader.

Curation — The Elephant in The Room

Tom Kuegler is a Medium veteran most of you will know and he wrote a super-educative as well as detailed analysis of his take on the changes.

He describes the Curation changes as a “de-emphasis” on curation. While I partly agree, I think the intention behind this change is flawed, even if the result may be partly positive, partly negative.

Here’s why.

As mentioned before I am only about 3 months old on Medium. Yet, I’ve been lucky enough to get a fair share of curation experience. In my first full month on Medium in July, I had 4 curations which jumped to 12 curations across 21 topics just in September. So, a total of 16 curations in 2 months — I’d say not a bad result.

I am someone with no big social media presence — I made a Twitter profile 3 days ago and still barely use it, and my activity on Facebook as good as nil. So I enjoyed the extra and fresh set of eyes my stories got via the holy grail of curation. But here is what I noticed lately:

The original Medium Curation guidelines talked about “14 days” as the amount of time a story usually takes to be reviewed by curators — don’t look for this in the link as this was taken OFF in the latest Oct 2 update
Here is my understanding of Medium Curation — every story first goes through a thorough algorithm that checks for any violations of the “curation guidelines” and if there are any you were quick to get a “Not distributed in Topics” message. However, clicking on a little “?” also took you to the curation guidelines link indicating you violated something
Once you met the algorithm’s filter, the expectation was for a curator to manually review your story and see if it was worthy of distribution across topics. If it was, you’d get the much-awaited “Distributed in topic 1, topic 2…….” on your story, and if not then you’d get “Not Distributed in Topics”
Until you got reviewed by a curator, your story continued to show a message “Hang tight, we’re still processing your story” or something to that effect.
However, with the increase in volumes and no corresponding increase in the number of curators (understandably), the number of stories that were stuck at “Processing” increased, and in the end, they moved to a “Not Distributed in Topics”. But there was a difference.
Now the “?” next to this said that “the story may be reviewed by curators at a later time for further distribution.” This, to me, essentially meant that due to the volumes, the story never was reviewed by a human i.e. the curators and so the result is a “Can’t Say” but not a Yes or a No.

What the latest changes mean is that while curation will continue to happen in the backend — Medium is making no promises or giving no timelines to its writers. It means that every story may NOT get a fair shot at curation, even though curation will continue to exist. While you can’t fault Medium for being unable to review the HUGE volumes of stories, is this still fair?

I don’t think so.

For veteran writers or those who get lucky with a few viral / semi-viral stories early, the followers are a big enough number to give them sustained readership. But for new writers, this means an increased reliance on publications and a lot of luck to gain new readers and hence followers.

To me, this steals not just a big opportunity for a fair assessment and potential curation from new writers and old writers alike but also takes away that “thrill” and “challenge” of achieving curation — because while you will still be curated, rejection won’t necessarily mean you weren't good enough, it may often mean you just weren’t lucky enough to be reviewed.

I am an editor at ILLUMINATION. Curation is close to our heart. We amplify curated stories of our writers and keep them in a special collection. We are helping our writers self-nominate their stories for publication level curation. Curation is important to writers whether it is by Medium or publications.

Focus on Followers — Is It Really Relational?

For any of you who are on a handful of Facebook groups about Medium and blogging in general, you’d know the unfortunate practice of “follow for follow”. Luckily, Medium doesn’t fully work that way, and most writers worth their salt don’t fall for that trap. Yet, getting 1000 followers by following 2000 people and hoping for half of them to follow you back is a toxic thing.

Why? Because none of those “follows” from you to them and them back to you are relational. They’re still all transactional. But do I blame these people? Not really, because when you’re vying for that extra set of eyes to fall on your story, and HOPE that it catches their fancy enough to get a “read” and hence some “read time” what else are you to expect?

Also, writers who have been on Medium for long enough or have built a strong follower base are bound to continue to grow as a compounding effect, while those struggling to take off will further struggle, because the number of “new” eyes that see their content will now be limited.

Enough of Criticism — Is There a Creative Solution?

By the System, For the System.

Like no other platform, Medium has willing writers and talented people wanting to support each other. I am lucky to be part of one such group at Illumination. We all know there are publications like The Ascent, P.S. I Love You, The Writer’s Cooperative, who all have very high standards on their specific topics of expertise, and have a “tie-up” with Medium in terms of Curation.

So if you’re good enough to publish with them, you get curated automatically.

I think that is a masterstroke and a perfectly good way of leveraging the strength of the platform for the betterment of the platform.

While the handful of official “Medium Curators” can’t possibly review all stories, there is a case to be made to increase the number of curators by collaborating with those who really form the platform.

That and technology. In a world of AI and Machine Learning, there is surely room to make the algorithms more stringent and capable of doing a stricter first filter. There is SO MUCH plagiarism on Medium that should ideally be caught and not even allowed to be published — let alone consume precious readers’ time and hence also generate money for the content thieves that write those pieces.

My two cents to the powers that be would be that hundreds of thousands of writers and readers have put their faith and trust in you as a platform. Don’t disappoint them by shying away from this added responsibility from your recent exponential growth. Instead, leverage them, and the strength that comes with so many exceptional minds coming together, and use it to keep this platform the amazing intellectual melting pot that it is.