Thought Leadership
Is This Medium Survey Racist And Ageist? Or Am I Missing Something?
This instant perception springs forth from a poorly written survey
Context
I received an exciting message from the Medium Helpdesk that quickly dissolved into disappointment.
Hi Mehmet,
Quick reminder that Medium is currently fielding a research study available to creators like you. This study is designed to help us at Medium better understand our creators and how we can do more to serve you in the future.
My initial thoughts and sentiments
How lovely I said when Medium used my real name in a personalized email!
How wonderful Medium called me a creator!
How beautiful Medium thinks about my feature!
How visionary Medium is thinking about creators’ future!
Process
The first question was about my age.
I told the truth.
I am over a half-century old.
The second question asked about my country.
I told the truth.
I am from Australia.
When I was expecting the exciting questions to begin, the fun stopped.
Reality showed its ugly face in my metal skull surrounded by grey hair.
Based on two questions related to my age and country, I received this message:
Thank you for your responses in this survey so far, unfortunately, you are not a great fit for the rest of this survey but keep an eye out for other research opportunities from Medium. Have a great day!
Here is the screen capture.
My thoughts and sentiments after this response
The survey disqualified me based on my age and country.
Is this survey designed by people discriminating against writers based on age and country?
I thought Medium was open to all ages and all countries.
What do age and country have to do with setting the future course of Medium?
Is Medium trying to exclude some countries?
What is wrong with Australia?
Is Medium trying to exclude certain ages?
What is wrong with having over 50 years of experience?
As one of the most active Medium members collaborating with around 10,000 writers and 130,000 readers, running seven active publications, who personally contributed over 1,697 stories and 6,021 responses to the platform within an experience-span of 15 months, I thought my voice would be important to Medium’s future.
But I was wrong.
My disappointment, though seems well-founded and shared.
I read a similar concern from an engaging and accomplished author who has brought a lot of vitality to Medium. You can read the story of Phil Truman at this link.
So Phil and I are out like many other experienced writers.
This situation has reminded me of the pain articulated by our insightful writer Rebecca Stevens A. on ILLUMINATION-Curated.
Conclusions
This survey concerned me about Medium’s approach to its and our future.
In my opinion, this survey does not show any diversity by obviously filtering based on age and country. It seems to be designed by inexperienced people.
These two disqualifying questions are the least important factors for choosing people from my decades of experience in content strategy, development, and marketing.
I was wondering about the age group and country of the people who prepared this survey. Considering my advanced research background in industry and academia, I believe this survey was designed by a person or a group of juniors just out of college with no real-life experience.
If an old person like me prepared this survey, the initial qualifying questions would be:
How long have you been on Medium?
How long have you been contributing to content platforms?
How many stories did you publish on Medium?
How many articles do you read per week?
And more qualitative questions like:
Where do you see yourself in the next five years as a writer?
What are the key values for you as a writer and reader?
Of course, Medium is a private company, and they can set their strategy based on their vision. But as an active stakeholder of the platform, this survey did not give a positive impression.
I had a feeling that maybe the distribution algorithm is programmed by these kinds of inexperienced people; thus, we face so many issues lately.
I am not surprised that my content is not curated anymore, thinking that perhaps the algorithm finds me too old, from a foreign country, and perhaps even overqualified. A great combination to filter essential messages for society and instead allow more entertaining content for subscribers.
My post is to show my genuine concern about writers’ future and not to criticize Medium’s vision.
Being an active player on the platform as a contributing writer and avid reader, the survey left a very sour taste in my mouth.
If I am missing something, please comment.
Thank you for reading my perspective.
You may check sentiment analysis for this topic from those who provided feedback as comments and other articles.
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