And now the whole issue is further muddied by the 30s rule. Because if we accidentally click on a story we didn't mean to (this happened to me just 10 minutes ago), either we penalise the writer by hopping back out before 30 seconds are up, which brings down their member read ratio, or we stay for >30s, and penalise the writers whose pieces we wanted to read, because we've used up part of our allowance.

Most dissatisfactory, and slightly corrosive of the spirit of camaraderie that most of us so love about this platform.

Hardly Sophie's Choice, but a far from ideal mechanic, or rather interaction of two different mechanics.