How to Find Medium Curation Topics

Summary

The web content provides instructions for Medium writers to uncover curation topics after Medium's recent updates removed them from the platform's interface.

Abstract

Medium writers are experiencing frustration due to the platform's removal of curation topics from the story settings page and the Stats page. Despite Medium's intention for these changes to foster a more relational platform, writers are keen on identifying reader interests to tailor their content accordingly. The article offers a solution by detailing a method to reveal hidden curation topics using Google Chrome's Developer tools. This involves accessing the browser's settings, opening Developer tools, copying the HTML element, and searching for "topic" within the code. The author has tested this method and found it to be effective, encouraging others to try it and share their results.

Opinions

The author acknowledges the frustration among Medium writers due to the removal of curation topics.
There is a belief that the changes made by Medium could potentially be beneficial for the platform's relational aspect.
The author empathizes with writers' desire to understand reader interests for better audience targeting.
The author is optimistic about the discovered method, describing it as a "good news" trick for the Medium community.
The method is presented as accessible, assuring readers that technical expertise is not required to follow the steps.

They were also removed from the story settings page

A lot of medium writers are frustrated with the recent curation changes. Curation topics are no longer displayed and you can only see the mention “chosen for further distribution” in your Stats page.

After the news was announced, Medium’s finest detectives were able to find out curation topics were hiding in the Reader Interests section in story settings, but it seems they were also removed from there.

While I believe these changes may be for the better (Medium said they removed topics to make the platform more relational), I understand why some writers would want to gauge their readers’ interests in order to get better at addressing a specific audience.

The good news is I discovered a trick to find the curation topics and it seems to work. It’s a bit nerdy but I promise you don’t need to be a geek for this.

Here are the steps:

Note: These are the steps for Google Chrome users, but it's very similar for other browsers.

Go to your browser settings :

Click on the “More tools” option then on “Developer tools”

In the code that appears on the right of your screen, right-click on <head>, then select Copy > Copy element

Paste it in a text editor

Search for “topic”

As you can see in the screenshot, my story was distributed in “Race” and “Equality”. I went to these topics pages and was able to find it there. I also used the same method on other curated stories and it worked.

This method may not be bulletproof, but it seems to work. Let me guys know if it works for you.