Medium’s Current Profile Layout Buries Your Work, With Your Other Work and It’s Become a Real F*cking Nuisance
I write this not to needlessly criticize this platform I call home but to do so in a constructive manner. I even censored myself in the title, as a sign of good faith. If you’ve read anything I’ve ever written, you know that’s not exactly a trademark of mine. I only do so in hopes my concerns will be taken seriously and heard. I can no longer stay silent on the issue at hand.
It’s time we talk about the monstrosity that is the current Medium profile layout — a problem plaguing anyone who writes here regularly. I’ve recently touched on how much more success I’ve found here than I ever did on my own blog or WordPress site, in a post you can find here. However one thing WordPress did get right was the monthly archive menu. One I desperately wish Medium would take advantage of and though I’m sure they have their reasons, I can’t wrap my mind around why they haven’t utilized already.
There are people who have been posting here on a regular if not almost daily basis for years. I myself have been doing so since last April. I like some of my work from last April and love a bunch of stuff I published last May. But I bet only a handful, if any of you, have ever read any of it. I contest I have the current layout to blame for the inconvenience. Medium’s loyal readers and paying premium subscribers alike are being deprived of truly brilliant work by their favorite writers here. People who publish here on a consistent basis shouldn’t be rewarded for doing so by being forced to make their other work just a little bit less accessible each time they contribute or create.
I love the fact I can highlight other writer’s sentences and specific paragraphs as well as respond to them. But why are my highlights and comments awkwardly shoved in between two posts of mine on my profile? It only forces anyone who may be interested in reading my older work to mindlessly scroll that much further down my profile to find it and the reality is most people don’t, they move on. Though I must give credit where it’s due, Medium’s related stories feature does a good job at recommending not only the older work of the writer whose stories you’re reading but similar writers you may like as well. I also love the collapsed post component to the current profile layout.
I’m not implying a monthly archive is the only solution to the current layout debacle. There’s plenty of feasible ways of solving what I consider a major problem to not only readers and writers but ultimately Medium as a whole.
I’m also not claiming Medium exclusively promotes only more current posts, I come across plenty of well previous dated stories. It’s just not enough, it’s too arbitrary and subjective. Just because the higher ups may have not loved something I wrote, doesn’t mean scores of other people won’t. Let’s give them an equal opportunity to decide. Archive me softly and stick my highlights and comments off to the side somewhere. Give a struggling writer a puncher’s chance here. More importantly, stop depriving readers of value by burying great work with other great work. Simultaneously and unintentionally making older posts practically inaccessible to the reader and obsolete to the writer as you do so. Do so not for my benefit but for the common greater good of us all.
Sincerely, Brian Brewington
