I think you nailed Medium’s problem quite succinctly. Interestingly, that was the premise behind Medium publications. They can’t line edit every post. There’s just too many. Thousands per hour. They can’t keep up. So they figured if they had in-house publications, they could do quality control on those.

Except, it didn’t pay. Those weren’t the articles and publications drawing readers. Because, in between the edited pieces from in-house pubs and the poorly written articles you refer to there’s a middle tier. People who don’t get picked up by Medium pubs but can write an interesting read and get it ranked in Google. Those are the writers bringing in new readers.

After a while, readers start to recognize — not just which names they like reading, but also which names not to click, because it’s going to be a lousy read. That’s why writers need to work on their own skillset.