“What do you think Medium should do to give Top Writer status some sort of meaning?”

In my opinion the best way to reward Top Writer status is with visibility. Right now it’s just a hollow label — much like Employee of the Month. All the main page feeds are 100% curated. They have sections like, Most Popular, You May Have Missed It, and This Is What WE Want You To Read. All those sections are 100% curated. It doesn’t matter if you’re a Top Writer or not because you will not appear in any of the main page feeds unless you are chosen by the Almighty Curating Staff. I think every main feed should have a new section that includes ALL the recent posts from the Top Writers in that category that are tagged with that category. That new section can be called, Top Writers. This section should not be curated at all! It should only show posts by Top Writers as they are published. This would go a long, long, long way to bringing some meaning to Top Writer status. I think the main reason Medium won’t consider this is because they want their Almighty Curating Staff to have 100% complete absolute total control over every single thing Medium readers are exposed to. (And that is the basis for many of the problems Medium currently has.)