Thanks for writing this. It made me think about things as I'm coming back to Medium full time. There seem to be a lot of changes.

I also haven't had a great experience on Vocal but didn't do it for more than a month. I entered several writing challenges but all but one they mistakenly disqualified me saying it was off topic when they weren't which put me off a bit. They also seemed more like popularity contests. The pieces that won at least back then were always the ones that had the most engagement.