Medium needs a better Feed

Photograph courtesy of elPadawan, Flickr

Since joining Medium almost a year ago, I have really enjoyed this platform. There are so many great writers here, creating some fantastic original content, that it is a little hard to keep up with all of it at times. I do manage, somewhat.

I continue to find it a bit difficult to follow the sources that I enjoy the most , which leads me to writing this recommendation. Perhaps, someone can identify what I am doing wrong, or the good folks at Medium will recognize the potential for a new feature, or adjust an algorithm somewhere.

Often cluttered with nonsense that I could really care less about, my stream is the primary concern. I follow about 22 different tags; one or two that are relatively specific, like GIS. However, most of the tags are general, such as History, Design, Culture, Photography, etc.

One example is stories by the publication “War is Boring.” I do not mean to pick on them. I have read a couple of really good articles from them, but I do not follow that publication. I do not follow the writer that recently published a story in that publication. I do not follow any of the tags identified in the article, yet there are three stories from this publication in my stream now.

Meanwhile, recent stories that I really care about, from folks that I follow, publications that I follow, and tags that I follow are getting very little stream time. Once, I tried countering this effect by accessing the tags directly, but there is another problem.

Some of the stories under tags are months old and extremely stale. For example, the first story under the tag for Missouri displays an article from February 28 that is wholly irrelevant now. The bill failed to make it out of committee back in April. What use is that story to anyone?

Visiting each individual or publication is not an option either. If I have to resort to that, I might as well just surf around the internet as I did before. Indeed, that is what started trending in my world, and I got to thinking; Medium really should have a better means of keeping folks on the site, reading the things they follow on Medium, and even things they care about that are not on Medium.

A few weeks ago, I re-discovered the RSS feed again. I was amazed. There have made great strides in the development of the RSS Reader since I last bothered with it, which was about the time Google discontinued that effort. In my most humble opinion, this is exactly what Medium should be enabling on the site to attract and retain readers.

Using Feedly, which has undergone a fantastic facelift, I can pull in stories from all over the web, and not just Medium. I can categorize my content, see what is new today, mark articles read, bookmark them for later reading, and even get suggestions for related content that I am not following, off to the side. It even provides a wide array of social media integration and sharing tools, as well as the beginnings of its own little social media platform. The platform that I migrated my publication from, Blogger did a few of these things too, though not quite as efficiently. WordPress also offers a similar format, but their interface is just awkward and confusing at best.

One thing I do not care for on Feedly, is that it requires a bit more clicking around, which I am not usually inclined to do. If I want to “Recommend” an article on Medium, or any other source really, I have to select to “Visit Website” from the bottom of the article display. Ironically, this sort of thing is probably skewing the stats on Medium too. If I go to the Medium site to “Recommend” an article, I definitely do not read it all over again.

. . .

I truly feel there is an opportunity for Medium to step up and meet the needs of current users, attract new users, and as all web sites are most interested in doing, keep those users on site all the time. Medium is by far the best platform for publishing that I have had the opportunity to use. It simplifies everything, why not simplify the stream, and make it more user centric.

I would like to see Medium implement a customizable stream, wherein users could choose to see only the content to which they subscribe; additionally, enable an option to pull in content from sources outside of Medium.

The tabs at the top already offer users the opportunity to explore other Medium publisher topics. Along with the side bar that currently displays a few articles from those subjects, maintaining those would be sufficient to encourage folks to look around a little.

Tags display need modified to display the Latest, or at minimum, as mentioned previously, make it a user-defined option. The content on many tags is stale and irrelevant.

I think these little changes could also provide writers on Medium a lot more exposure, balance the playing field a bit more, and keep it from continuing down the path of appearing at times to be a rather gated community; unless, of course, that is the intent, then never mind and carry on.

The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures

The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures hosts the world’s largest fine-scale miniature collection and one of the largest collection of antique toys on display. Indeed, it is one of the few places were multiple generations can share a trip down memory lane, finding common ground in the toys and games of childhood years past and present.

The museum only recently re-opened after extensive remodeling. It first opened in 1982 as the Toy and Miniature Museum of Kansas City in a modest, Italianate mansion at the corner of 52nd and Oak on the University of Missouri — Kansas City campus. Since that time, it has grown to house over 300,000 unique items.

Recent renovations to the building have helped to modernize not only the structure, but also the displays. Multiple video screens are associated with several of the exhibits, displaying history and demonstrations related to the craft of toy and miniature making and manufacture. There are also a couple of hands-on displays for folks to get an idea of the artistry behind these items.

The main floor contains an extensive collection of miniatures and houses from the past hundred years or more. The houses and set displays represent a variety of cultures and sizes; tiny one room displays to castles, and everything in between. Those items not in a home of their own are artfully set into the walls behind glass in small one-room displays.

Parents will be doing some heavy lifting throughout this area though, as not all of the displays are at a level easily accessible to smaller patrons. Indeed, they will definitely need some help looking through all of the houses. The curator should consider adding some viewing steps for little ones, to ease the burden on their guardians.

Following the stairs up around a column of toys spiraling from floor to ceiling, the second floor is not quite as challenging to view for the small ones. Many of the toys are behind wide display windows with plenty of hall space to get a good view. There are still a few though that will need parental assistance.

Nearly every era of toys and games for children and children-at-heart are on display, featuring some of the most popular ever known, and folks will be surprised at how far back the origins of some reach. There are few more dollhouses on this floor, but these are the grander and gaudier, and a few owned by local residents; including one owned by Kansas City native Josephine Bird, daughter of one of the founders of Emery Bird Thayer Department Store. Outfitted with an array of personal family heirloom items, it also contains many items obtained from the department store, when Josephine was but a child in the late 1800s.

The Golden Age of Pedal Power As an added bonus, two special exhibitions were in progress on the second floor during this particular visit. “Pedal to the Metal” carried over from August, highlights some of the most fantastic pedal-powered inventions of the 20th century. It is a stroll though the history of the pedal car and an entire generation that rolled down the city streets and through farm backyards under their own power, and in their own version of the Ford, Chevrolet, and Kiddilac. There is even an Oscar Mayer Weiner mobile!

In a separate exhibit, “Messengers of Goodwill” enables visitors to discover a part of American history lost, in a display devoted to the American Blue-Eyed Dolls and Japanese Friendship Dolls. The display tells the story of how these three-foot tall dolls played a part in mending diplomatic relations between the two nations during the 1920s, as well as their subsequent relegation to the shredder at the beginning of World War II.

This little museum is definitely one of Kansas City’s own unique treasures and an adventure that will capture the imagination of young and old alike. It is open daily year-round, except for Tuesdays and major holidays, and at the time of this writing, only 5 bucks for children ages 5 to 100.

. . .

further reading

The National Museum of Toys and Miniatures

Kansas City, MO