Nooo… Just today I read a curated article in the Education topic that had no featured image (or any image), no dropcap, the wrong title case (sentence case instead of title case), and bold formatting instead of subheads. But it was a good read. So a lot of the “follow the magical rules” superstitions often discussed on FB don’t really hold true.

That said, there is definitely a way they flag writers or use some sort of metric that tells them to pay more attention to people who have been curated before when they submit new pieces. Also, there are some types of writing that may be great, but just doesn’t seem to have a home on Medium, and gets ignored.