Topics like plagiarism and civility have been vigorously discussed on Medium since we started. They’re important subjects: These conversations will, and should, always be happening here. They’ve surfaced again in the last week, and I want to talk about what happened, how we responded, and where we plan to go from here.

First, an overview of what happened: Someone wrote a post that some people regarded as plagiarism that should be taken down. Others believed (and we at Medium concluded) it was a parody and therefore not plagiarism (or copyright infringement). The post remains up. The original poster, a prolific…