Medium Could Solve a Huge Issue with One New Feature

This solution’s a throwback to 2006 — but it could reduce the writing spam.

I’m one of the grouchy old long-timers on Medium; I’ve been reading articles, and writing my own, for more than three years.

More recently, I’ve noticed a concerning trend on Medium. More and more of the articles that are published tend to not be about interesting topics that are engaging for readers, but are instead catering to writers.

Some of this may be based upon my own choices, and what the Medium algorithm chooses to suggest to me. (In fact, when I check out the main page in an incognito window, I find plenty of exciting articles. Why aren’t these being recommended to me? Why do I keep ruining my algorithm by falling for clickbait?)

But I have an easy solution that Medium could implement: give us a forum!

Let be clear: I’m not talking about a general place to be heard, or a town-hall style situation. That would be great, and Medium should definitely embrace more openness between its moderation/executive team and its community of writers who create its content.

But no, I’m talking about real forums. A message board, like we had back in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

I think that a forum could help Medium improve its writing community, in a number of different ways.

Benefits of a Medium forum

A lot of the writer’s articles that I see go over personal experiences, a writer’s own path to success.

This makes sense, of course; we each have our own journey. And I can’t really report on the success of another Medium writer, not without spying over their shoulder.

But right now, the only way to report on your success is to… well, to write an article about it. And while I’m sure that these articles do earn a bit, it is more useful to many writers to see reports from others, all shared in one place.

Additionally, many new writers on Medium have questions about how to get started. Instead of making them try and search for a dozen “this is how I got to 100 followers” articles on Google, why not have a forum, where writers can post all the info that they want to pass on to others?

The current method — write a Medium article about your lessons learned in writing Medium articles — is useful for writers, but terrible for readers. If I want to learn the basics, I cannot find all the useful information in one place. I have to hop around the site and explore, hoping to stumble upon a useful article that will teach me what I need to know.

And what if a new writer has questions? Right now, there’s nowhere to pose those questions to experienced writers.

(You could put it in the comments on the article, but the writer may or may not respond, and you aren’t likely to get a wide swathe of opinions from other writers, who may have different views.)

All of this could be solved by a forum.

Potential forum sections:

• New Writers Welcome: a place for beginning writers to post questions, and for veterans to share advice.
• Publication Central: editors of publications can share them, inviting new submissions, and writers searching for a home could find their best fit.
• All Things Payment: how to make sure you are getting paid for your content.
• Marketing & Advertising: learn how other authors find new readers. Hear what works and what doesn’t.
• Collaboration Corner: want to co-write a piece with another writer? Have an idea, but not certain how to bring it to life? Ask here.

Would you want to join any of these forums? Would you want to post here, read posts here, instead of having to hunt them down in a bunch of scattered, individual posts?

Downsides to a Medium forum

Of course, a Medium forum would have some downsides, as well.

Why post when I could get paid for a story?

The first issue? People aren’t going to get paid for posts in a forum. Right now, there is an individual motivation to write lots of posts about “this is how I write, this is how I make tons of money on this site” — because they get clicks, and they earn payouts.

There’s a bit of the tragedy of the commons at work here. If writers share their feedback in a forum, everyone benefits, overall, but that individual writer does not get extra money. (Maybe they get extra recognition?)

But if the writer takes their knowledge and puts it into a Medium post, they can get paid for it, even though it is harder for inquiring members of the community to discover.

Perhaps the best solution is a hybrid; if someone asks a question in the forum, writers can respond with a few tips and then add, “for more detail, check out this post I wrote on it!”.

If Medium makes it, they need to maintain it

A Medium forum also needs to be discoverable, which means that Medium would have to do work to promote this to their creators. That’s an investment from Medium that they’d have to continue long-term, which they may hesitate to choose.

Stop the spam

Finally, this Medium forum would need fairly comprehensive and tight moderation. Other open discussion areas, such as Facebook groups or the /r/MediumPosts subreddit, are swamped with people spamming links to their stories.

“Read me, read me!” they shout into the void, among hundreds of other authors doing the exact same thing.

And this points to a wider problem, one that I fear is a slumbering dragon that may someday awake to swallow Medium entirely.

Everyone can’t be a Medium writer

Medium needs to cater to two communities: readers, and writers.

There’s considerable overlap between these. I love reading and exploring thought-provoking pieces on Medium, and I enjoy creating my own content. But the simple financial math shows that everyone on the platform can’t be in this position; Medium needs more readers than writers.

Quick, probably inaccurate math: each person pays in $5 per month. Medium takes a cut of that. Thus, if you want to profit from writing on Medium, someone else will have to take a loss.

If every person on Medium is trying to turn this site into a profitable venture, it won’t work. You can’t make $1,000/month from Medium unless 200 other people take home $0.00.

And a simple fact is that people are drawn here by the desire to write — and earn — and they click on articles about this. What happens when, as I mentioned earlier, too many of the articles are not engaging for readers, but are instead catering to writers?

I don’t know what fraction of articles on Medium are tagged as writing advice, are catering to other authors, rather than simply to readers. But I hope that Medium staff are keeping an eye on that, watching to ensure that the site does not become an ouroboros, a snake swallowing itself.

In summary: forums to support the writers, without overwhelming readers

Medium is a great site — still, after years of changes. It manages to cater to two audiences, both of which are vital: the readers, and the writers who create the very content of the site that draws in more readers.

But there’s a danger in those two audiences. The writers could produce content solely aimed at their own group, and the readers lose interest and leave. This would be the death of Medium.

In order to offer support for writers, without destroying the experience for readers, Medium could offer forums, dedicated places for writers to discuss and share their experiences.

Forums are an old idea, but they have stuck around for a long time, and that’s because they work. Medium likes trying new things; why not try a writers’ forum?

How many posts do you see that are about writing on Medium? Would you use a forum?

Do you prefer reading “how I write” posts as standalone stories?

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