Medium has squandered its potential, says this writer:

Right. It's just a rack of zines. There's no reason for anything to cohere around a particular idea or philosophy.

One of the comments comes from Medium's head of community engagement, which is an actual job. Sample:

Good luck. Some of us believe that these "tribes," to use the smug term, arise and form on their own in various places, and top-down attempts to create them are doomed. Even helping them flourish can be harmful, like taking in a sick baby bird only to have its mother reject it later. For example: Digg does a nice job researching the sort of "community" that takes care of itself, without tags or curating or any other buzzwords.

Remember Where's George? Remember getting a dollar with the red stamp, and feeling vaguely irritated that you felt obliged to enter the serial number in the database, because that's what we did on the internet? We all pitched in. The founder talks about why it caught on:

The demographic greyed. Facebook became the default "community." People use plastic instead of bills, so the opportunities for bill-stamping and logging is down. And people got bored, moved on.

It's an interesting story; most tales of the early days of the internet focus on the youts who grew up with the medium or the people who populated and inflated the first bubble. There's little about the middle-agers who weren't paradigm-breakers or proto-distruptors or any of that nonsense, but found a unique entrance to internet culture.

Wonder if there was any overlap with the Pay Phone Project.

Yes, I did save my bookmarks from the late 90s; why do you ask?