Now You Can Respond To A List & Clap For A List

When someone adds your story to their list, you should get an email notification if you have Notifications ticked under your Medium settings!

To my surprise, this week I received an email and it stated that I could clap or respond or share the list that my article had been added to.

The screenshot above from my email has been edited to erase the name of the writer on Medium whom added my story (for privacy).

To clap or respond you may have to scroll down the screen, right to the bottom of the list. You will see icons for clapping or responding at the bottom.

OR you may see a “floating” bar with the options to clap or respond!

Anyhow I think that it is useful to receive emails about stories added to lists and that clapping or responding to a list is useful, because of the following reasons.

(1) You know that your story is of value enough to be added to someone’s list.

(2) You can see the name/title of the list that your story was added to and this may inspire you to write more of the types of stories in the list that your story was added to.

(3) You can follow the person who added your story, so that you can see what they write or who they follow; and possibly write more on topics they are interested in.

(4) You can show your appreciation for the writer by clapping for their list and/or commenting on their list. For example, you could write something like “Thanks for adding my story to your list” or “You may be interested in my other stories at [ link to your list etc. ]” or “Thank you for creating this list as I got a lot of use from it.”

(5) You can clap for or respond to a list even if your story hasn’t been added to a list!

I would love to see statistics on the number of visits to my Lists. You will receive an email if you have email receipts configured under your Settings, if someone responds to a list.

You should see a Notification on Medium when someone responds to one of your lists or claps for one of your lists. But you only get an email when someone responds to one of your lists.

Perhaps experiment with clapping and/or responding to lists, politely or nicely of course; and see what happens!

Be mindful that lists are dynamic, e.g. may be here today and gone tomorrow. Also your story could be removed from a list.

Conversely, I would like it if someone clapped for or commented their appreciation on one of my existing lists!

Here is a question that I thought about and some others may too. What if you don’t want someone knowing you have added their story to a list? Maybe you want privacy in terms of the author/writer not knowing your business, in this case that you added their story to a list!

Well, hopefully new (and old) members on Medium have read the official post or article about working with lists. It says that one can comment upon public lists. That is a fact about lists and the way Medium has implemented them.

If you don’t want a response on a list to be shown, you can click on the 3 little dots at the top right above the response and click on “Hide this response.”

You can even close discussion on a list so nobody can see any responses made. To do this, click on the 3 little dots at the top right of your list (next to the sharing links/icons) and click on “Hide responses.”

People can still respond, but nobody (except you) will see the responses!

Below is a link to the official Medium guide on lists.

Can you think of any reasons for or against being able to clap for or respond to someone’s list?

Would you share someone’s list? If yes, why?

Thanks for reading. I’ll leave you with a blessing.

May the good list be with you, and also with me. Amen.

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