I have many feature ideas for Article. Most are terrible, awful thoughts.

Article’s superpower is its simplicity. Peak epicenter design. Notion before it became Bloa-tion.

But.

One feature request is stuck in my head. I’ll state the problem first.

The Read queue lacks connective tissue. It’s a random hodgepodge.

Exploration is a dice roll. I could search by keyword, but the result is still a random hodgepodge.

There’s no connective tissue to curate my reading experience, e.g. links that guide the reader from article A to article B and C.

I can solve 90% of this problem myself by citing articles as URL links, e.g. a response to article A, or a counterpoint to article B.

But.

When others cite my articles, there’s no way for me to know exactly where.

Personally, I could care less about likes, reads, etc.

Knowing where writers are citing my article, that’s gold. I can follow those rabbit holes easily, and share contextual responses. Citations can be the flywheel for writers’ feedback loops.

Citations also help other readers easily discover those divergent “read more” paths as well. It creates an engagement network effect.

To drill down on the solution, keep it simple. I don’t want notifications, or citations eating up the UI. Instead of X reads, I could see X citations, and pinch that to reveal the list of articles that have cited mine.

But.

I hate making feature requests for apps where simplicity reigns supreme.

But at least I’ve made peace, by sharing this piece.