I’m all for constructive criticism or user-driven feedback.
So, let’s take a look at 3 little-talked-about suggestions that could have an enormous impact on our Medium experience.
#1 Plagiarism checker
Plagiarism is a huge issue. Unfortunately, little has been done about it so far by Medium. To be fair, this problem doesn’t just plague Medium, it’s a general online issue.
Too often, we see Medium stories stolen and published elsewhere, usually on ad-driven sites to generate income.
We also see Medium stories plagiarized directly on Medium. Similar or identical stories published by two different authors on this platform.
Both issues should be priorities for Medium. And both are easy to fix, or at least to contain a little more.
A simple plagiarism checker integrated into Medium’s editor. Several tools do that. This would go along way.
If not web wide, at least check Medium-internal for plagiarism.
There’s nothing worse than writing a piece, earning cents with it, and then seeing someone steal and publish it elsewhere, making good money from it.
#2 MPP worldwide
This problem is another huge one. The partner program is not available in every country. This is mainly due to Stripe’s limitation here. But it sucks nonetheless.
Why not offer an additional payment service that caters to more countries and hereby includes more people?
Now, if having more writers is a good idea, in general, is another question entirely, but the playing field should be level, shouldn’t it?
#3 Activity monitor
What’s that?
Let me explain.
I’d love Medium to keep activity in check on this platform. Medium should remove (after contacting and warning, of course) inactive writers, as well as inactive publications from this platform.
If you haven’t been active in 6 months or a year, sorry.