Same as a like on other social medias. Except that you can ‘like’ (clap) several times.

Before (not sure when), Medium was distributing money based on number of claps. Not anymore. So the 50 maximum is less relevant now. It’s more vanity metrics than anything.

Maybe if there were 5 stars/claps max, it could be used as an indicator of the quality of an article (like sellers’ ratings on ebay, for example)

Thanks for clapping and commenting, Scott :D