Medium, Please Change to a One-Click “Like” System—or at least to a Five!

If I could change one thing about Medium, it would be the insane fifty-click system for “liking” articles. I understand a writer’s pay was once based on the number of clicks each person gave a post. I also understand that’s no longer true.

We’re stuck with a system that no one agrees on.

Does one click mean you actually like something or you think it’s okay or you dislike it?

Does ten clicks mean you really like something, or that you think one click is insulting so if you really like something, you give it fifty clicks?

I have given posts fifty clicks, but it’s rare because I pretend I have better things to do than sit there holding down my mouse while an article’s click count climbs.

If I was in charge of Medium, I’d study the merits of two systems: five clicks versus one.

A five-click system would let people who want to assign meanings to the different numbers of clicks have all the fun they wanted: one click would mean “good enough to click” and five would mean “great”.

A one-click system would simplify everyone’s life. It would simply say, “This is recommended, not necessarily because I agree with it, but because I found something of worth in it, even if I disagreed with it.”

The simplest thing to do about click counts on old articles would be to leave them alone, but if a one-click system was enacted, it…