Highlight This
a critique and suggestion
Medium has provided a reasonably good platform for writers, photographers and other creatives to broadcast their work. It can be exciting to have other people leave comments on my work and for me to be able to comment on others’ work. I’ve also had some wonderful, robust discussions on issues using the comments facility.
I also like being able to leave private messages for contributors, and receiving them.
The one aspect of Medium posting that irks me is the highlighting facility. I can understand people being struck by passages in a piece and wanting to share their awe. However, Jack highlighting something in Jill’s story may mean nothing to Jill, nor to any other reader. I would like to see the highlighting facility changed so that, if Jack wants to highlight something, he needs to leave a comment on his reason for highlighting. This could be as simple as, “I find this hilarious.” Or it could be an analysis of why the highlighted passage isn’t appropriate in the context of Jill’s piece. This would allow Jill and her readers to understand Jack and to respond to his reasoning if they want.
As a reader of other people’s work, I often find the highlighting breaking the rhythm of the piece, or creating emphasis where none was intended by the writer. I know that I can highlight something, right click and choose the ‘comment’ icon. However, this still leaves the text highlighted. And too much highlighting occurs with no comment at all attached to it.
The ideal would be a complete absence of actual visual highlighting and still allow the reader to mark a part of a piece — a word, a phrase, a paragraph — and comment on it but leave no highlighting in the original work.
Now highlight any of this at will.
