Our mission: To share the highest quality stories, writers, and publications on Medium with readers.

Quality levels

Curators review stories and assign them one of three levels of distribution:

• Boost: These are standout, feature-quality stories that deliver value to readers following or interested or curious about that topic. They are given higher weight by the recommendations engine; we try to ensure that these stories get at least 500 views via the Medium platform so they’ll have a strong chance of gaining momentum.
• General Distribution: These stories are eligible for wider distribution but not Boosting. They are part of our pool of distributable stories as candidates for personalized, algorithmic distribution to the right reader, as well as to the writer’s and/or publication’s followers. For example, a story given General Distribution that is tagged with “programming” might be presented to a reader following the topic “programming”. In your curation tools, you’ll use the “Average” button for this, even though many of these stories are higher than “average”.
• Network Distribution: Stories that are distributed only to the writer’s and/or publication’s followers, but are not given further algorithmic distribution. For example, a story given Network Distribution and tagged with “programming” would not be presented to a reader following the topic “programming” unless the reader is also following that writer or publication. If a curator finds a story to be a potential or known Medium’s Rules violation, the story is also given Network Distribution as a temporary measure, and then reported to Trust and Safety via the ... menu for further action, possibly suspension.

All stories we review are evaluated using our public quality guidelines, which is our canonical resource for evaluating story quality.

Bias

It is critical that we curate with as little bias as possible.

Externally, inclusive curation matters to:

• Create a platform that is itself inclusive and supports diverse voices
• Prevent the circulation of harmful content, voices, and narratives
• Challenge stereotypes and status quo

Internally, inclusive curation matters to:

• Build culture and belonging on our teams and in our workplaces
• Streamline our projects and the quality of our teamwork

We strive to be inclusive of identities and characteristics that include (but aren’t limited to):

• Gender Identity
• Race
• Ethnicity