Thanks Mitch. I think you might be headed toward the disconnect which is how to communicate the financial incentives.

I hear you asking for worked examples. That's a fair ask, but is also impossible to do. The factors that go into your payment include a lot of unpredictable behaviors that change day-to-day: what people publish, what they read, how much they read, how much they interact.

But even if we could do this, I'm still wondering why it is necessary. Regardless of knowing the calculation, you do know the result of that calculation. That should be enough to decide whether to keep doing what you are doing? (I really need to note that Medium was built for hobbyist writers who wrote for free and they are still the majority of our writers, so I don't think we need debate deaths of social platforms. Someone writing less because the pay doesn't work for them isn't the death of the platform. I try to avoid that debate because it's enough just to talk about you, your experience, and the experience of your peers)