I greatly appreciate your perspectives. I've been writing on Medium for five years, so have been witness to many of its changes and struggles. I have always believed that Medium can be great, and its recent change in direction is heartening to see because it seems to be shifting into a higher gear finally.

I'm not privy to what the higher-ups in Medium think or do, and I won't spend time trying to guess. I just do my job of producing quality content and hope the Medium staff does their job of maintaining a quality platform for quality content. Medium has become my primary platform for my general-audience writing and once they work out the kinks in the Partner Program payment (they have swung the pendulum too far in certain ways) this will be an even more fabulous place to be.