I am well aware of your profile. I’ve been reading your stuff for some months now. Usually I agree with you but this time I didn’t and spoke up. To put reading times with articles to “warn” people if an article is too long to read only encourages authors to keep their articles as short as possible if they want the reads and green hearts that they so desperately need to become a “power user.” It’s all about quantity over quality which is the basis for most social media. By asking Medium to warn you if an article is too long to read you are only encouraging Medium to be more like Facebook or Twitter where everything is super short. You are encouraging the quantity over quality mentality.

Your number of green hearts or followers don’t mean a darn thing to me. What matters is your words, what you are saying and how well you say it. That is where the real power is — not in the numbers. And that is what readers might best focus on instead of zeroing in on the read time as they look at their watches, which is what your article seemed to be encouraging.