John, I agree with all your points. Plus:

I have noticed that Mediums algorithms are quite fallacious. My reads were up, then they changed their algorithms, and suddenly my previous and new reads went down to almost nil. They changed how stats are displayed and suddenly stories that had tons of views were showing almost no reads. At that point I totally gave up on paying any attention to their stats. I reported the problems and they denied that there was an issue.

The only reason I remain here is because of a handful of pubs that I like, including Weeds and Wildflowers and for the beautiful souls I have “met”.

I do more reading and commenting in the late fall and winter because of gardening at other times.

I only read authors whose work I like, and I try to return claps and comments in a timely fashion.