Yes, the 'enforced conservatism' late in the month is a factor that was evident from what other nommers were saying last year. Maybe there is no way of avoiding that, but it's wrong that a great if edgy or experimental piece submitted on the 1st should stand a better chance than on the 25th.

Having the strike rate smoothed over three months as a rolling average displayed on our dashboard would help - that way your 5 'spare' hits from last month that you didn't need to be lifted would carry over into this month, allowing you to make freer use of the allowance.

It tends towards a feast/famine scenario, where you have a lean month of 20 targeted noms, and then a splurge of experimentation, bringing your rate down, before another more restrictive month.

Maybe that's what they want. Maybe they haven't entirely thought it through? But it's unfair on writers, who have no way of knowing if this is a good time of the month, or a good month, to submit that masterpiece they've been polishing.

I've said for a long time that the Boost is great for nommers, good for readers, but delivers poorly in many ways for writers.

I remember how it felt sending great stuff in to nomming pubs and seeing it get 10 reads having not been picked, with no way of knowing if it was the nommer that rejected me - maybe they had 8 other brilliant pieces that day - or it was nommed but dissed by Curation.

If Medium is to address writer churn (and Substack defections), it needs to find ways of making the Boost more user-friendly for writers, who right now are at the bottom of the priority pile, it seems.

I feel there's a lack of understanding of the psychology of the whole structure from a writer's perspective.