An Open Letter to Evan Williams.

Dear Evan,

You probably don't know I exist. Which is fine. There is a billion people in the world. One can’t simply be aware of everyone’s existence let alone know them. But I admire your work and you seem like a decent chap.

When I first got invited to the Medium beta, I was ecstatic. It truly seemed like something different than Wordpress/Blogger (Yes one of yours no offence intended) and a dozen other blogs/platforms out there. It focused on quality. Quality of writing and quality of the community. I discovered interesting, thoughtful, soulful and beautiful pieces of writing. It brought back the joy of reading books and essays as a teenager. The time before publishing was democratized and there was not so much noise and vanity metrics.

But then I started finding some ‘disappointing’ posts on Medium. Posts that had a snappy title like ‘10 Ways To Increase Your SEO’. Worse still they have the horrid line at the end ‘ If You Like This Please Hit The Recommend Button Below <3' — yes that’s right, some folks even make a tiny heart to emotionally blackmail people into recommending their posts. From there the algorithm(?) takes over and it displays all the ‘most recommended’ posts from collections I follow to the top despite the fact that these posts perhaps don’t belong on Medium, which in your own words is a place to share ideas, read and write better (not quoting you here). Now it feels like its driven by page views and recommendations. This reminds me alot of Quora and Reddit where up-votes don’t always bring out the best quality of content.

I feel a certain nostalgia to the early days of Medium when I would login and see Editors Picks on the front page. Now I am bombarded with the collections I follow and I can’t seem to find Editors Pick exclusively on my front page, which would put me in the flow to discover more content with the help of the next recommended reading.

Without a second thought I knew the prose that made Editors Picks would enrich my day, teach me something new and make me reflect on life in general. When I first started reading Medium I was relieved to see a writing & reading platform that focused on quality. I was relieved to see stories and meaningful content. I think somewhere during that time Medium at-least for me is turning into another publishing platform and lost the focus on quality of writing & community.

I am by no means implying that I am one of those people who write thoughtful, reflective pieces but I distinctively remember when I decided to write my first post on Ramadan, I was intimidated and overwhelmed by the quality of writing on Medium and was not sure if I should even write something.

I know that Medium is at 1.0 now which is a big step in its life. I wish it the best years ahead and I am and will be a user (both writing and reading) but I feel like Medium lost a little something along the way and I would for one love to see it back.

Best,
Kamil Rextin

P.S: If I am being irrational or ‘taking it the wrong way’ on any of the above, I would like nothing more then to be proven otherwise.