Community
The many ways for RCSD readers to keep in touch.
There have never been so many ways to connect online and we are committed to be on those social networking platforms where significant numbers of RCSD readers can be found. We attempt to use each platform in a distinct way so that we are simply not repeating content from one platform to another. But inevitably there will be some overlap. Note that our use of all of these platforms is guided by our Social Media Policy. Here are all the platforms we’re either on, are planning to be on, or are under consideration (in alphabetical order):
This is one of the primary platforms that Bill and Bunny Kuhlman used to keep in touch with RCSD readers since the last issue rolled out in December of 2018. Bill Kuhlman, one of the Editors Emeritus of the NEW R/C Soaring Digest, will be the primary poster. If you’re on Facebook we encourage you to like and follow RC Soaring Digest there as it will be a reliable way of getting updates on both the new publication as well as the amazing archive of past issues of R/C Soaring Digest along with other interesting, related artifacts.
Groups.io
This was the primary mailing list for the original R/C Soaring Digest and we will continue to use it for the new publication. If you want to be sure that you receive notifications — such as when new issues are released — then you’ll want to add your email address to the Groups.io list.
Instagram is intended primarily for posting an image, a group of images or short videos and then adding some pithy commentary along with some hashtags to aid in discoverability. Obviously, these media are all highly aligned with the content objectives of R/C Soaring Digest and the interests of its readers.
One of the features (some say limitations) of Instagram is only one hyperlink can be active at any given time. What’s more it can only be found in the profile as opposed to the individual posts themselves where no hyperlinks are allowed. There are some hacks to get around this limitation but we won’t be using any of these.
Our objective for Instagram, therefore, is to present images and short videos related to the current issue. When Instagrammers discover our posts they can use the solitary link in the profile to navigate to the current issue and in doing so, perhaps become a new, regular reader. We will read and respond to any comments, so long as they fall within the parameters oulined in our Social Media Policy.
Over the period between the release of a given issue and the next, our Instagram posts will feature the current issues’s articles in the order they appeared in that issue. While we’re posting on given article, the link to that article will be our profile link. As we roll from one from article to the next, we will update the profile link to reflect the next article we’re featuring. Please follow us on Instagram for all this and other unique content you won’t be able to find on any of our other platforms.
LinkedIn (under consideration)
We’ve heard LinkdIn described as ‘Facebook but for business’, which we think is partially true both in a favourable and unfavourable sense. But it does tend to be the platform which is used to research companies and organizations as well as the people associated with those entities. Given that RCSD provides coverage for what is primarily a hobby for most, what place would it have on LinkedIn?
Candidly, we’re not sure R/C Soaring Digest does belong on LinkedIn. But if and when it does, it will be primarily to provide further information which will be of interest to advertisers and sponsors of the publication. If and when we decide to move onto LinkedIn, we’ll announce that in the publication as well as on our other social platforms.
Medium
Medium is the primary home of the NEW R/C Soaring Digest. It will be used by authors to write their articles, submit them for editorial review, mange any updates required and then host the content once it is published. This process if covered in detail in Writing for RCSD: Steps, Guidelines and a Few Pro Tips for Authors.
In addition to the role it plays as described above, Medium has some of the characteristics of a social media platform which is why you’ll find dicussion of it here in this article. Specifically, readers of any article on Medium, including those in RCSD, can rate the article with one or more Claps. As you likely can guess, this is one way to show your approval and endorsement of the article to other potential readers. Like an article? Give it one clap. Like it a lot? Give it, say, five claps or maybe more — as many as you feel it deserves.
Another characteristic of social media found on Medium is the ability to write a response to an article which in turn, becomes its own article to which further responses can be written. In this manner it’s possible to ‘converse’ through a series of linked stories. We will read all responses to articles in RCSD and where appropriate we will write responses to these. We will also encourage authors of the articles found in RCSD to read and where they feel its appropriate write their own responses as well.
Finally, the one additional social media characteristic of Medium is the ability to customize your interests which is accomplished by following publications, topics and individual authors.
While we are talking about Medium as being the home of the NEW R/C Soaring Digest, it is also important to mention our web home as well: https://new.rcsoaringdigest.com which Bill and Bunny Kuhlman will continue to maintain for the forseeable future. First a bit of explanation: there is one potential and significant flaw in RCSD being hosted on Medium — ultimately, it is not a platform we either own or control. While highly unlikely, it’s not impossible for Medium to go away in the future for any number of reasons. Or it may have a change of policy which diminishes or eliminates the benefits of its use. https://new.rcsoaringdigest.com is our strategy to protect against any of these contingencies. As new RCSD content is published on Medium, a version of that content will also be hosted on https://new.rcsoaringdigest.com so we have a bulletproof, long term home on the web of our own.
R/C Groups
We do not have a formal presence on RC Groups but it is huge community of interest and it is inevitable that RCSD readers and potential contributors will be found there. As such and from time-to-time, you will find posts from RCSD in the Sailplane Talk forum. We also do our best to keep up with the questions and answers which flow from these posts.
Slack (not yet active)
Many readers will already be familiar with Slack in their work environment. It is described by the company as “a channel-based messaging platform” which really isn’t all that helpful is it? Think of it a multi-user chat system where each text message is assigned to a ‘channel’ roughly analogous to a forum on R/C Groups for example. Slack is intended for highly interactive chat and the sharing of files and other artifacts. The RCSD Slack workspace has been setup but is not currently active. That said, if you are familiar with Slack and would like to join the RCSD workspace to get the ball rolling, go for it. We’ll see you there. If you’re not familiar with Slack but are intrigued, there is a good Getting Started guide available which kicks off with What is Slack?
An exciting future possibility is multilingual chats on Slack. Participants will select the language in which they would like to read and write messages and all the translation happens real-time and on-the-fly. We’re currently evaluating add-in applications to facilitate this feature. This is seen as a nice complement to our intention to publish The NEW R/C Soaring Digest in the various languages submitted by authors.
Often thought of as l’enfant terrible of social media — often much deserved — we still believe Twitter has considerable merit. Our primary initial use will be to use a series of tweets, linked together in a thread, to create an index of the current issue. The first couple of tweets will highlight the first article, the next couple will feature the second article and so on until all articles have been covered. Twitter makes it relatively easy to scroll back and forth within a tweet thread so it’s an effective method of increasing the ‘surface area’ of the current issue and hopefully increase readership as a result.
We also use Twitter to publicize other newsworthy information both about RCSD itself as well as other news about R/C soaring in general or anything we feel will be of compelling interest to RCSD readers. We may also use it for ad hoc interaction with the community such as informal polls, questions on which we would like to get reader feedback, open calls for a certain types of articles, requests for specific kinds of assistance and reminders about deadlines. Other than the ‘index thread’ described above, our use of Twitter will generally have less structure and will be less predictable than our Instagram feed, for example, which will be quite structured by comparison.
As with all of our participation in social media, our use of Twitter is guided by our Social Media Policy and we will use the tools recently introduced by the platform to keep the conversation civil, smart, focused and accountable. Please follow us on Twitter as it will feature a lot of content not on our other social platforms.
Vimeo (not yet active)
Similar to Medium, Vimeo really isn’t a social media platform in a traditional sense. However, also similar to Medium, it has characteristics of social media which is the reason why we include discussion of it here. The Vimeo Like is the equivalent of the Medium Clap. There is also the ability to leave comments on Vimeo as well as ‘follow’ other Vimeo users. We will also read and where appropriate respond to all comments with that interaction, of course, guided by our Social Media Policy.
Incidentally, we expect a significant number of contributors to RCSD will want to embed video content into their articles. We also expect much of that video to already be hosted on platforms like YouTube, for example. For those authors who do not have their video content hosted on the web, we offer the RCSD Vimeo account as a home for that. Once video content is hosted on the web in this manner, it can be embedded in a Medium article with a single line of text.
In addition, we will also be putting together a series of our own in-house videos, initially to provide training support for authors on some of the trickier aspects of using Medium for article creation. These how-to videos will also be hosted on our Vimeo account.
Is there a social media platform out there where a significant number of RCSD readers can be found? If so, please let us know about it. We want to be there, so long as its capabilities and participants are consistent with our Social Media Policy.
We looking forward to meeting up with you somewhere out there on the social media landscape!
©2021 R/C Soaring Digest
Read the next article, return to the previous article or go to the table of contents for this issue. Downloadable PDFs: article issue
