I hate Infinity Percentage

Summary

The author expresses frustration over receiving applause (claps) on Medium for an article that has not been read, leading to an 'Infinity%' fans per read ratio, which they find meaningless.

Abstract

The article titled "I Hate Infinity Percentage" discusses the author's discontent with the practice of clapping (applauding) articles on Medium without actually reading them. The author points out that mathematically, dividing by zero does not result in infinity but is undefined, yet Medium displays an 'Infinity%' for the 'Fans Per Read' ratio when an article has zero reads. This has occurred for the author's article, which, despite having claps, shows zero reads, thus triggering the 'Infinity%' metric. The author emphasizes that claps without reads are hollow and prefers genuine engagement over superficial applause. They reference their own article, "Medium 101," where the first rule is that reads should outweigh claps, underscoring the importance of reading over mere clapping.

Opinions

The author is dissatisfied with the 'Infinity%' fans per read ratio on Medium, which arises from articles receiving claps without being read.
They assert that true appreciation comes from reading and understanding the content, not just from clapping.
The author would rather have no claps than receive claps without the corresponding reads, as it feels insincere and unfulfilling.
They highlight the irony of Medium's 'Infinity%' metric, which mathematically should be 'Undefined' when there are zero reads.
The author's first rule in their article "Medium 101" emphasizes that the value of claps is contingent upon the articles being read first.

Why would you clap someone’s article without reading it?

Technically it might not be correct to say that a number divided by 0 is Infinite. Infinite is not a number, it is just a mathematical concept. Any number divided by 0 is at best ‘Undefined’. But based on the circumstances of a programming language, it may generate positive or negative infinity by the IEE 754 floating-point standard, generate an exception, generate an error message, cause the program to terminate, resulting in a special not-a-number value, or a crash.

Medium generates an ‘Infinity %’ and I am okay with that. I am fine. But I am not okay with the circumstances that lead to this. Please have a look at the below screenshot:

The Infinity% refers to the ‘Fans Per Read’ ratio. It does not take a genius to figure out what caused this to happen. If you still did not figure it out, there is a lonely 0 in the second column which denotes the ‘Reads’. Yes, no one, no one read my article. But they clapped. Am I supposed to be happy? Earlier today I posted another article named ‘Medium 101’, which is an aggregation of some the rules about this platform.

You can refer to that article below:

Anyways, the first rule in my article was ‘Reads> Claps’. Claps do not mean anything to me unless you read my article and genuinely appreciate my writing. Why do you think I will be pleased if you randomly come and clap some of my articles without reading them?

I would rather someone don’t clap at all. Please read if you can, it is okay if you skip it. But don’t clap without reading. Because I hate the ‘Infinity%’.

I Hate Infinity Percentage

Why would you clap someone’s article without reading it?

Medium 101

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