A story has to be really, really bad for me not to clap at all. I figure the very bare minimum of one clap is a sign of respect for the time and effort the author put in. If I enjoyed what I read I will clap anywhere from 7 to 50 times depending on how much I enjoyed it. I gave someone 45 claps yesterday for a short story that I thoroughly enjoyed and which I considered to be very well written. I try not to be stingy with claps.

But yes, I have noticed that more and more people are clapping less. Whether it’s money in your pocket or claps at your fingertips, most people tend to be stingy instead of generous. It seems to be human nature.

Being in the Partner Program, I can see that claps are not worth much more than a penny (if that.) So if I read something that had serious effort put into it, to give them a penny is almost insulting. The most I can give is 50 cents, which is also pretty cheap. Sometimes when I read something truly wonderful I wish I could clap a thousand times.

But just like Medium’s algorithm, I try not to think too much about clap metrics. I try to avoid looking at numbers because here at Medium it can be rather depressing. So I concentrate on words. I concentrate more on quality than quantity. I wish Medium did the same but for them the only way they can judge quality is through quantity. That’s the nature of a system based solely on numbers.

What I find sad is what Quasimodo and Jack Preston King brought up about the length of stories. With over 2 years of writing at Medium it has become very apparent to me that stories that are over 8 minutes long rarely get clicked on and read. And it seems the read time is going down. It used to be around 12 minutes. In today’s age of 128-character attention spans this is deeply worrisome. But, once again, it seems to be the nature of the beast and there doesn’t seem to be anything that can be done about it. I just hope Medium doesn’t turn into Twitter. Perhaps the growing need for extreme brevity to today’s readers is somehow spilling over into their clapping habits and a need for brevity there as well. I don’t know.

I don’t know the answers but I know that I am chomping at the bit to clap for something wonderful. And right now there is a lot to clap for on Medium and for that I am thankful.