I wonder...
...how many of those posting snarky or dismissive criticisms of the new Medium member's homepage have actually taken the time to provide feedback via the proper channel?
While I would hope that Medium staff are proactively monitoring for items based on tags and keywords such as "homepage" and "membership" there is a lot of content posted on a daily basis and, with the best will in the world, they're not going to get to everything.
Feedback channels exist for a reason - to funnel relevant comments directly to those that need to see them - and not using them is a waste of everyone's time.
Questions
I also see questions from people who have already paid for membership asking how various aspects of it, or the redesigned site, will or do work.
While a number of details are still very sketchy there are a number of answers already available to some frequently asked questions in the emails, posts and on site notices sent or available to members. 1
I can only imagine people have skipped past these without reading them.
I don't want to sound like a Medium apologist - I have my own doubts, concerns, wishes and questions - but just shouting into the ether is not going to help get things fixed.
Agenda
Medium has an agenda, of course it does - the initial areas for exclusive member only content have already been laid out. That agenda may not align, or sit comfortably, with some users; that's only natural and membership obviously isn't for those people.
Some may want to quit Medium altogether (some already have) and that is also understandable; a shame but understandable.
Could communication have been better? Yes. Was a partial, soft launch the best way to introduce a new business model with such wide reaching ramifications? Absolutely not.
We are where we are.
Decisions have been made and Medium has to live with them and either stand by them or learn from them - probably both. It also needs to listen to, and learn from, its users without whom the whole house of cards will come crashing down.
To be fair, feedback has been solicited on more than one occasion throughout the available communications.
But if we as users are willing to pay for a premium service and want it to truly work for us then it behooves us to contribute in a responsible and productive way.
- Not a pre-populated list of FAQs but genuine questions frequently asked by members in posts ↩
# The "I Wonder..." post won't win me any friends but the amount of negativity being thrown at the Medium membership experiment is ridiculous.
# Twitter's "Muted Words" feature is an absolute game changer and it's not often you get to say that about Twitter. Third party apps should have access to the rules you create - if they haven't already. I'm still not going to jump back in and have also killed Nuzzel mails.
