The Medium lottery is a hamster wheel. When Medium selects someone for the lottery, they get more reads and more claps and a higher Medium paycheck. So it makes sense for them to write more articles. Those on the outside looking at the hamster wheel and want to be there. They are probably just as good writers as the hamster.

For community, one of the better forums I participated in was WRITER BEAT (now defunct). When I posted an article on WB, it would be widely read and generate a long discussion thread. We got to know each other reasonably well.

I got a few of these people to take a look at the TDG. No go, but there's where I understand the psychological aspect of not wanting to move this concept forward.

At any given time, WB maybe had 100 regular contributors. Socioligists say that a typical individual only keep 100 to 150 people active in his/her life, THe owner really tried to expand her forum, but maybe WB was just at that limit.

I would say that after two years on Medium, I've had conversations like this only a handful of times. Medium is not a good place to build community.

On one get-rich-on-Medium article I ran across, I got this formula:

1) Write an article everyday.

2) Do not read other articles (because that takes time from your writing).

3) Do not respond to other articles (because that takes time from your writing).

4) Do not respond to comments on your article (because that takes time from writing other articles).

I think a few popular writers employ this formula fairly religiously. Some popular writers clap back and/or offer a quick token response. But their goal to write more articles for you to clap, not read yours.

There's an awful lot of good writers on Medium. Most are not getting much traction. I think Medium psychologists figure out the writers to keep higher in the feeds, not the algorithms. Some of these popular writers are saying the same thing over and over again. But if they keep up the image of a successful Medium writer, that's all that matters.