There is no Curation Jail

Only busy curators and 24 hours in the day

I hate to contradict some members of the Medium aristocracy who have weighed in on this theme. But I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway.

I don’t have an inside track to curators, or even to many editors or other writers, but I know what I see when I publish an article and check its stats, and nothing that I see makes me think that anyone is being consciously penalised and placed in a sin bin.

In fact, everything looks to be completely in line with the known facts, which are:

• Thousands upon thousands of new stories being submitted daily
• Mere dozens of curators available to assess them

Maybe the increasing volume of submissions has affected those writers who have been around the longest, since they remember when there wasn’t such a deluge of stories to be assessed and they could more easily stand out.

I read one lament that curation had dipped down below its previous level of 80%. Four out of five items curated? The question is not why this has slipped but how such a score was ever achievable.

There are three states of submitted articles which are not in dispute:

We are processing this story. Hang tight!

You have just submitted and the clock has started ticking for curators to see whether they want to distribute in topics. I have never seen this state last for less than an hour, nor to extend beyond twenty-four. My assumption is that there is a secret time limit within which a decision needs to be made.

Distributed by curators in…

Yippee! This is what you want to see. Before the time limit has been hit, a curator for one of your tags has decided that your piece fits their niche (and you are of course using curated tags, aren’t you?). Happy days! You will get featured at the top of the page for that tag, and possibly on one of the main pages or email summaries. There’s no guarantee of a tsunami of readers, but your chances just got a whole lot better.

Curators did not select this story for distribution

Bad luck. Your article was seen by curators and either ruled out on a technicality or on quality grounds (they aren’t going to tell you which). But at least you know that it was seen, and if you both follow the rules and up your game, you might have a better chance next time.

Now, here’s the one which causes people to fear they are in Curation Jail:

Our curators were not able to review this story for distribution in topics due to high volume

Here’s my take — this story may have stayed in the queue right up to the time limit because it couldn’t be ruled out on one of the easy technicalities (foreign language, obscure title). However, it has been denied distribution just because the timer ran out and a decision had to be made.

This outcome is inevitable if the growth in articles continues to outstrip the growth in curator numbers. Otherwise, Medium would face a growing backlog of articles stuck in the “story processing” stage.

Is there any cause for complaint if the above is an accurate picture of what is happening? Do writers think that curators have the time to single them out for special punishment? Or are there some writers who think they deserve special exemption from the normal process because of who they are and what they have done in the past?

I am currently running at a 5% curation rate, and really have no gripes. I understand why some articles were selected, while others were a bit of a surprise. But the 95% which weren’t can be explained fairly easily. I know what curators’ expectations are (because Medium has kindly told us) and I choose to ignore them on the whole. In particular, I will seldom construct a headline which follows the preferred format:

Here is the substance of my article summarised in a single statement

And here is a much more detailed and comprehensive subtitle which makes it hardly necessary to read any of the text which follows

I am a lover of puns and tricksy word plays in Headings and Subtitles, as a result of which few of my titles will ever get past first base with the curators. I suspect curators must love me, as the heading is surely the first thing they look at when finding a reason to say No. And if you have 1,000 or more articles to assess, you are certainly looking for reasons not to have to read the full text of each.

Fail fast is the motto of every startup in the current landscape. I have adopted that same mentality, so that I can accept the rapid denial of curation to the majority of my output and be pleasantly surprised at the occasional exception.

If you are focused on getting curated at all costs (even though Casey Botticello has come up with some great arguments as to why it’s not entirely necessary), here are some of the things which are commonly thought to help.

Follow the rules

Read and integrate into your thinking all of the Medium curation guides, so that you will never use puns just for the hell of it, or languages other than English, even as a joke (watch out for the forthcoming “Un petit d’un petit” post). Here’s the full official list of do’s and don’ts.

Go through a major publication

Maybe it’s just coincidence, but both of my articles published in PS I Love You were curated, as was my only piece in The Startup. I wouldn’t rule out some overlap between editors and curators, or a hotline between them for articles which are about to be accepted for publication. Or maybe it’s just that being published by a known name is one of the things that grabs the attention of the curator when scanning that pile of submissions.

Familiarity

I’m not saying there is any sort of favouritism at play here, but name recognition may be a factor. I know which article is most likely to be read if one of mine is sitting in a list alongside one by Tim Denning. Heck, even I would probably go for Tim’s. This factor is likely to be of shrinking importance the greater the volume of stories submitted, which may in turn be what has sparked the recent wave of protests.

Be new to Medium or hack your claps

I’m not saying these tricks work — I have just seen them put forward.

There was a widespread belief that work by new writers was more likely to be considered when they were submitting their first pieces, after which they would either be on the favourites list or off the list going forward. By now it should be obvious that I don’t think there is a list, so this is just another straw to grasp at (I have read of people creating a new profile just to try to take advantage of this).

Rapid claps for your work immediately after it is published have also been said to sway the algorithm which presents suggested pieces to curators. More magical thinking, I suspect, and I wouldn’t be rushing to create secondary and tertiary accounts just in order to garner a quick flurry of applause.

And that’s about all I wanted to say on the topic of curation. More than the general reader probably wants to know, and too many assumptions backed by too few hard facts for the writers who are most interested in the topic.

I hope that the former will forgive me and the latter will fill in some of the blanks in my understanding via the comments.

Oh, and here are my top two curated stories, by number of fans!

And two of the most popular non-curated pieces. Can you spot any difference?

Many thanks for reading!

Further thoughts on this Medium life below: