In The Air
Some thoughts as to where we go from here — at least technologically speaking.
What eventually drove me away from attending Sunday mass, many years ago, was the arrival at our parish of a firebrand financial fixer masquerading as a kindly, aging Irish priest. What was obvious from his sermons was Father was less interested in saving our souls than he was in our savings accounts — a substantial portion of which we should, as good Catholics, pitch fork over to help make the parish something less of the financial basket case than it was at the time. A dwindling congregation should have provided a clear, unequivocal signal to the priest that he was — as we like to say these days — ‘off message’.
So with this background, it with some trepidation that I turn this month not to RC soaring, but to the seemingly arcane subject of online publishing and specifically our use of Medium for that purpose.
A warning: it’s pretty techy, nuts-n-bolts, rattle-in-the-engine-room, Inside Baseball kind of stuff. If that isn’t your cup of tea, then please scroll down to the bottom and have at the April issue. I’ll understand completely and won’t be the least bit offended. If I was sitting where you are, I might even do the same myself.
That said, and at the risk of potentially emptying the virtual pews…
Are Medium’s Days Numbered?
Personally, I have been writing on Medium for six years (nearly to the day) and what attracted me to the platform in the first place was its focus primarily on a ‘pristine reading experience’. If you imagine a high quality, coffee table magazine — you know the ones that cost $20 in the local bookstore — the folks at Medium seemed to have used that as their Prime Directive for what readers would see when they were reading stories. Seemingly not far behind was making it an easy-to-use platform for writers. They made it a lead-pipe cinch to make a story look good. That came with limitations — Medium still doesn’t format tables worth a damn, for example — but on a net basis, I was quite happy to work within those limitations for all the time and energy I saved not tweaking format. Go with the flow was the order of the day.
That’s what informed making the choice to use Medium as the primary publishing platform for the New RC Soaring Digest when it was launched in January of 2021. For quite a long time it looked like sheer genius — even if I do say so myself. A substantial number of contributors were happy to jump on board, learn which levers to pull in Medium and started cranking out great articles formatted in a consistent, attractive way and with relatively little effort. A fair number of contributors where not able to make that leap, however, which candidly should have been my first clue that my self-assessment of my ‘genius’ might have been just a little overstated. Okay, a lot overstated.
Trouble at t’ Mill
A few months ago, you may have noticed your home screen with Medium had changed — and not necessarily (or even likely) for the better. It was replaced with this thing:
It’s ever present when reading stories whether you like it or not. I was so alarmed when it showed up I actually called it in as a technical problem. To which the folks at Medium Support said, ominously (and paraphrasing), that it was ‘intended behaviour’. In other words, it was supposed to be this way. So when I attempt to read, for example, Greg Lewis’s popular story on the ChocoFly ASW 17, it now looks like this:
The clutter is a little different — and maybe a little more useful — but it’s still clutter. Making things worse is this new reader interface comes with the collateral damage of severely limiting the options for formatting images, which are such an integral and important part of the RCSD reading experience. There were previously four different choices for placing images in the copy. Now there is just one and the least imaginative one at that. Gone was our favourite — the ‘full bleed’ formatting of the key image above the title.
So, the pristine reading experience which was a really important reason why Medium was chosen in the first place, has become the proverbial baby thrown out with the bathwater. In the spirit of fairness, I have linked in the Resources section at the bottom of this article, Medium’s explanation and rationale for their choices which I invite you to read at your leisure. If it makes sense to you (and without a hint of sarcasm) that’s great. It just doesn’t make any sense to me.
Furthermore, the trigger for dedicating these valuable In The Air column inches to this arcane subject was the hint of further changes to come — none of which sound like positive developments, from my perspective. I guess we’ll all see.
Whew, We’re Future-Proofed
Within a couple of months of launch — a small but very important decision was made with the intention of future-proofing RCSD to the almost imperceptibly small chance that Medium were to go away at some point. It’s super techy, but here it is:
When sharing the URL for any article in RCSD (such as used in social media, for example) rather than sharing the Medium-specific URL, we share the URL that is RCSD-specific instead. Here’s an example: for last month’s In The Air, when it was published on Medium, it was automatically assigned the URL:
https://medium.com/rc-soaring-digest/in-the-air-6b7ebade4b34
There’s no rhyme or reason to it — it’s simply a string of characters that’s guaranteed to never change. But when we share the news of this article being available to RCSD’s readers, we actually share it with this URL:
https://new.rcsoaringdigest.com/2022/03/in-the-air
What we do, when you hit that latter URL is use something called a ‘JavaScript redirect’. In other words, one line of code that runs and sends you over to the link on Medium and away you go happily reading the article you expected to see. It usually happens so quickly you may not have even noticed.
The implications are significant, though. In the event that Medium does go away for RCSD at some point — which now seems more of a possibility, even if it’s not yet a probability — then the JavaScript redirect simply will go to the new publishing platform, whatever and wherever that might be.
This approach has some other distinct benefits: first, it’s way easier to remember the ‘friendly’ RCSD URL as opposed to that string of weird characters. But also, it permits us to tweak things a little so that the URLs share really well on social media from which well over half of RCSD’s readers come, as it turns out. By comparison, sharing Medium-specific URLs can be a tad, well, unpredictable. We also use this redirect file to gather some privacy-regulations-compliant metrics on where and how many readers we have.
Rest assured, however, that we are busy working on options that will keep RCSD the great reading experience it has been, is, and always will be. That’s our Prime Directive. This whole schmozzle may even be a blessing in disguise. By perhaps taking a new path, there may be even greater possibilities for RCSD in the future.
I’ll provide more news along these lines as and when it’s available.
OK, you have made it this far, for which I am eternally thankful. And no collection plate being passed around! But I think it’s best to simply let you get on with the stuff which really interests you, by clicking one of the links below. And as always, thank you so much for reading and thanks to our great contributors for making it all possible.
Until next month, fair winds and blue skies.
Resources
- A Better Medium.com — Medium’s explanation of their new look user interface which is the subject of this article.
Cover photo: The outstanding photo which graces the cover of RCSD this month is by Mark Baldacchino taken at everyone’s bucket-list flying site, Torrey Pines. Pictured is Gary Fogel’s Schweizer TG-3 a few weekends ago just after launch by Greg Schibler. Gary notes that this particular model was made in 1977 and so this flight celebrated its 45th year of soaring. Gary has also contributed a wonderful article to this month’s issue of RCSD. You are welcome to download the April cover in a resolution suitable for computer monitor wallpaper (2560x1440).
Here’s the first article in the April, 2022 issue. Or go to the table of contents for all the other great articles. A PDF version of this edition of In The Air, or the entire issue, is available upon request.
