Medium Named The Nominators Names And People Missed The Point.

Here's the point, as I see it from the inside.

This week, Medium published a list of 60+ publications in the Boost Beta program. It’s not a full list. It’s just the nominators who agreed to be listed publicly. There are nominators who prefer to keep their participation private, too.

Humans being humans, a lot of people focused on who is on the list.

…Why were these people/publications chosen?

…What was the criteria for choosing those people/publications?

…Hey, one of those doesn’t accept new writers. Foul. Not fair.

…Wow, this feels elite. There’s “them” and “us” now.

Focusing on the list of nominators and publications misses the point. It’s not about the nominators. We’re just guinea pigs. The goal is that ultimately, all publication editors will be able to nominate posts for boost if they wish to participate.

Know why they want editors to do that?

Because, not long ago, Medium was overrun with garbage posts.

People writing how to make money on medium posts. Side hustles. Medium tips and tricks. People churning out 3-5 posts a day thinking they can “beat” the algorithm with volume. People using ChatGPT and AI to spit out reams of content.

It got so bad readers were leaving in droves. Writers are actually the minority there. The vast majority of paid memberships are people who go there to read, not write.

So when readers were leaving, the money to pay writers was shrinking.

Algorithms weren’t helping. So they decided to go back to human intervention. Having real people look at every post and ask — is this a good read?

Except? Volume. They get over 10,000 submissions every day. Seven days a week. And that was months ago. It’s probably significantly higher now.

And they have maybe a dozen or two paid curators.

It’s not humanly possible for a small handful of paid staff to read that much content. Pay more staff, people scream. Sure, but how many people would it take to read that kind of volume? The payroll alone would eat up the writer’s pay pot.

So they said hey, let’s shove editors in the middle of the submission tsunami.

Basically, they want editors to do the first pass.

Here’s how they explained it to us. Imagine Medium is a giant magazine. All the stories on Medium are “in” the magazine. Send us the ones that should be cover stories. Those are the ones we want curators to look at.

Keeping in mind eventually that it will be all editors. Not just us guinea pigs.

But, but, but…. what about favoritism????

After focusing on the nominators, the next biggest concern was favoritism. Several people asked if there are “checks and balances” to prevent nominators from picking their friends. One guy said the nominators could “team up” and cash out. lol

No. That’s not a thing. Because there ARE checks and balances.

We call them the curators.

Sure, I can nominate my friends, but the curators can decline my submission. And if I get too many declines, that tells them I’m not a good judge of what they’re looking for. And there’s the rub. What “they” are looking for. I’m a finder. Not a decider.

Nominating isn’t a new concept

In the retail world, there are people who work as finders for corporations. Home décor or fashion or whatever. Giant chains send people out into the world to find stuff the corporation might want to sell.

When the finder comes back with an armful of stuff, whether it’s t-shirts and leggings or candles, cups and décor, the company looks at what the finder found and says yup, yup, nope, nope, nope, yup, yup, yup, nope.

It’s the same job.

Nominators pick which stories to show the curators. Curators say yes or no. There is no dispute process. Yes or no. They like it. Or they don’t.

I don’t always agree with their choices. Sometimes I get frustrated because I thought a story deserved a boost. They didn’t agree. So it goes.

The reality is, they get to have that say.

First, because it’s a privately owned corporation.

Second, because they see their stats. I don’t. I can only go based on opinion.

They’ve said they’re leaning into stats. Looking at what content retains readers so they can boost more of that. So people don’t cancel their subscriptions. So they keep paying their monthly fee to read. So Medium can keep paying writers.

I don’t always agree with what people want to read.

But I have eyes.

I can see that in six weeks, my personal reflection publication already has as many daily readers as the history publication I’ve been building for two years.

If I can see that, so can the curators.

It makes me a little sad. I wish more people loved history like I do.

That said, there’s a quality divide in every niche, too. There are history posts that got 2K reads and history posts that got 20 reads. Not every writer brings the same skill to the table. As an editor, it’s my job to see that difference.

It’s not easy. We don’t always know what’s going to resonate with readers.

But focusing on the nominators misses the point. Of pretty much everything.

We’re just guinea pigs testing human intervention against a tsunami of submissions. Eventually all editors will have the same ability. Every editor will have to look at what comes in and decide which stories to float to the top. And which not to.

It won’t be about “who” gets to nominate stories. Every editor will.

Here’s the potential choke point. The curators.

Will they keep selecting what’s performed well in the past and get stuck in time? I don’t know. It’s possible.

Here’s another potential choke point. Readers. If curators lean hard into what readers respond to, it means readers become the ones driving the bus. And I’m not sure what I’d think of readers driving the bus on a writing site.

But regardless? It’s not about *who* the nominators are. That entirely misses the point. We’re guinea pigs, that’s who we are. Sixty or eighty people testing a system of human intervention. I don’t know how this whole thing will shake out. Wish I did.

I guess time will tell.

---

On Medium…

• If I Could Go Back in Time and Tell Myself One Thing, This Would Be It

• Women Attempt Suicide More Often, But Men Are More Successful At It

• The Harsh Truth No One Tells You About Living on This Bitter Earth

---

If you enjoy my writing, please click the heart or share this post. Thanks. :)

xo,
Linda