New Partner Program Rules: ILLUMINATION’s New Policies and Guidelines to Adhere Platform Rules
An Interview with Dr. Mehmet Yildiz, owner and chief editor of ILLUMINATION Integrated Publications on Medium.com, who answered our important questions
Editorial Bulletin: Non-members can read this story via our friend link or here on our Substack.
Dear writers, readers, editors, and other community members! In this post, we want to share a brief interview we conducted with Dr Mehmet Yildiz, our chief editor and owner of ILLUMINATION publications, to guide us on the new partnership engagement rules posted by Buster Benson, director of Product on Medium Blog yesterday. Thank you for sharing this important story for our writers, guiding them to adhere to platform rules.
Hi Dr. Yildiz, happpy weekend, as your editorial team, we read Buster’s post and noticed that some of the points relate to our publication activities. So, we thought of your guidance on complying with platform rules. What is your first impression of these rules?
Thank you for this opportunity. This post will be timely for our writers, readers, and editors, as I received many inquiries about these changes.
I read Buster’s post yesterday and found it clear and transparent. It was a necessary bulletin that the stakeholders have been waiting for, especially after the recent substantial account suspensions which caused confusion.
I wrote about the need for Medium’s intervention to stop spam and scam accounts and also provided my personal perspectives on why we should support Medium while also supporting the accidental suspensions and get them recovered through a fair appeal process.
I am glad that Medium created an appeal process and restored several accounts that were accidentally suspended. One of them was our editor 🥰Lanu Pitan🥰, whose account was restored. I am very happy about this outcome and grateful for Medium’s fair play. I wrote a public testimonial about Lanu’s authenticity.
Based on my 40+ years of experience in the workforce, the bottom line is that every organization has rules, and all stakeholders must adhere to them. We shouldn’t compare one organization with another; they all have different goals and rules of engagement.
Additionally, rules change; older ones become obsolete, and newer ones replace them. Therefore, we need to stay informed and follow these rules to keep the engagement meaningful and satisfactory for all parties.
Regarding account suspensions, one rule that attracted our attention is related to publication accounts, which all belong to you. Please guide us on how to comply with the new rules.
Yes, sure! I also read the new rule stating, “While multiple memberships are allowed on Medium, using multiple accounts to engage with your own stories is not.” I appreciated Medium’s transparency about this, and I always remain transparent to my audience, even if it sometimes puts me in a vulnerable position. I know that truth and integrity always win in the end.
As I publicly documented last December, due to the large size of our publications, I have three additional publication management accounts, ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curators, and Dr Mehmet Yildiz (Tech) (which was previously used as sharing story links on social media) that I upgraded to Friends of Medium subscriptions to support Medium and our writers from my own funds.
These accounts are used for editing, publishing, and curation activities. I also shared my upgrade plan with Medium’s support team about these accounts and received their endorsement for them to be FoM accounts.
However, the new rule has a nuance that we need to address. As I share these three accounts with trusted volunteer editors, some of whom are non-members who cannot afford membership fees, they also use these accounts for reading and engaging with stories, including my own. As there was no rule about it previously, I did not pay attention to this blindspot.
The new rule clearly states that engagement with a writer’s second account for their primary account is prohibited. Therefore, I will ask our editors using these accounts not to engage with my stories.
Additionally, I have raised a support ticket to clarify this point and provide guidance on the proper use of these accounts. While awaiting guidance from the support team, it is wise for the users of my accounts not to engage with my stories.
Although I appreciate the kind gesture and care from these readers, I have a sufficient audience and do not require support for my content from a few editors. I believe reading and sharing content on social media from those secondary accounts is allowed, but I will wait for confirmation from Medium’s support team to fully comply with the new rules.
Now, the most pressing issue that surprised us. Last year, we created the Lampshade of ILLUMINATION to protect our publications from AI-generated content and support writers who want to experiment with it. What is your new strategy and policy regarding this new rule?
Yes, this new rule also surprised me. Some may disagree with me, but I fully support Medium’s new approach to be fair to the partner program. AI-generated content should not be monetized as the authors of such content do not put in much effort.
To comply with this new rule, I will create a policy asking the writers of Lampshade of ILLUMINATION not to place their AI-generated content behind the paywall.
However, we know that some writers use AI tools, but they also write the story from a personal angle, investing significant effort. This is a grey area, so I have asked the support team for clear guidance on how to incorporate this into our upcoming policy.
The rule states that AI-generated content is acceptable if it is not monetized. Therefore, we need to convey this message to our writers. Some aspiring writers enjoy using AI tools to enhance their writing and gain publishing confidence. We will continue to support them.
However, if Medium instructs us to cease publishing AI-generated content altogether, I am willing to decommission this publication, as it does not bring any value to our publications.
The majority of our readers have clearly expressed to me that they do not wish to read AI-generated content in ILLUMINATION publications. Therefore, I created this workaround publication to honor the requests of our valuable readers to keep our main publications clear from AI-generated content.
Last year, we used multiple AI detection tools, especially for stories submitted to ILLUMINATION or ILLUMINATION-Curated, but we stopped it, agreeing to their wrong results unanimously. Please comment on it for clarification.
Yes, we tested around 30 AI-detection tools, which proved to be an arduous task for over 100 editors. I felt that we wasted some time, but it served as a valuable learning experience, now understanding that these tools are not mature enough to distinguish between AI and human-generated content.
As we discussed in the editorial team, last year a new editor rejected a story from an established writer with a massive following, deeming it AI-generated content after one of those immature tools indicated it was 40% AI-written. It taught us the lesson not to rely solely on these tools to make important decisions.
Based on experience, I firmly believe that detecting AI-generated content by human editors is straightforward. AI-generated content often stands out, lacking the nuances of human writing. I observed that our editors easily discern AI-generated content and promptly advise writers to submit it to Lampshade of ILLUMINATION. Since I established this publication, I haven’t received a single complaint from the readers of our other publications.
However, some junior writers may mistake sophisticated human writing for AI-generated, as they might sound mechanically produced due to their unfamiliarity with such complexities. An incident occurred with one of our editors, inspiring me to write a personal story about it and provide insights. The key point of the story was that sometimes, content written by multilingual writers might be misperceived as AI-generated.
While we continue to monitor AI-generated content as we screen for harmful content, we will refrain from relying on AI detection tools, except in some rare cases where editors cannot reach a consensus. A few tools may be more mature for these exceptional tasks, but most are developed by individuals to promote their products or services.
Another question concerns community engagement, which might be confused with targeted engagement to inflate stats. Can you please guide us on this?
Yes, this important nuance is not new, and we have been addressing it for over four years now. As I publicly announced in March 2020, ILLUMINATION is built on diversity, inclusion, and serendipity principles, aligning with Medium’s spirit as an open community.
We support writers at all levels and encourage experienced writers to mentor newcomers, helping them find their voice safely and gain confidence. Meaningful engagement has never been a problem on Medium, to my knowledge. Annually, I mentor around 500 new writers, supporting their content by reviewing, reading, and sharing it.
I’ve also established a Slack workspace for all writers to share their content across multiple channels. However, I’ve made it clear that follow or clap requests are not acceptable, and I’ve programmed Slack to warn new members who attempt such requests. Our moderators also monitor such comments, issuing warnings to offenders and removing persistent offenders from our community.
Therefore, sharing story links on our Slack and customized social media platforms is not an issue. We will continue to do so, as it benefits writers, readers, and Medium’s growth. Through sharing friend links of stories on social media, we’ve brought in many new members. You have also written a guiding and inspirational story about this interviewing me, which has been well-received by many.
As Buster wisely and clearly points out, as writers and readers, we should “focus a strategy for positive feedback and earnings and focus much more on the craft of writing, expressing ourselves, contributing wisdom to the dialogue, providing insightful and constructive commentary, and connecting to others through the power of our words.”
This meaningful approach will be great for all of us to keep this wonderful platform as an enjoyable and sustainable place.
Thank you for your guidance on these burning issues, Dr Yildiz. We appreciate your leadership and support. Thank you for establishing ILLUMINATION, which now supports over 28000 writers and 78000+ readers on this platform as you pointed out in our new newsletter. We celebrated our 4th successful anniversary as well-articulated by our editor, Mike Broadly, DHSc, in his beautiful Aussie accent.
Thank you all for reading our interview. We hope you find this post helpful and would appreciate your feedback. You can always contact Dr. Yildiz on Slack and if he cannot respond to your queries you may get in touch with his volunteering backups Aiden (Illumination Gaming), Lawson Wallace, The Sturg, Mike Broadly, DHSc, InYah, or K. Joseph.
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