HELP
Medium: We Want our Banners back!
Medium asserts it is a browser problem but not per evidence
Running a significant publication on Medium is not for faint-hearted. We face many challenges. We also keep having funny and interesting scenarios.
We lost our banners in ILLUMINATION and ILLUMINATION-Curated stories yesterday. Until yesterday, we had the following banner which added a nice look to our stories.
As soon as I notice the change I sent a request to Medium support.
Stories in these publications looked like the view from the following screen capture. Fortunately, I saved this screen capture to prove my point as Medium support does not seem to believe the incident.
The first support agent asked me about my browser details. I provided details of my two browsers which I have been using since I joined Medium. Nothing has changed since ILLUMINATION was established six months ago.
Giving the benefit of doubt to the support agent, I contacted a few of our editors from different geographies. They all experienced the same problem.
Then, I sent another request to Medium support. The second agent also responded back with the same point — the culprit is my browser. The agent said that they were unable to replicate my issue.
As a senior technologist, yes, I believe the view is related to browsers but it is not related to my browser and it is not a front-end problem.
The issue is experienced by many other editors that I contacted yesterday and today.
Evidence
Here are samples using the stories from ILLUMINATION and ILLUMINATION-Curated showing that our banners got lost since yesterday.
Sample 1: This is from my Firefox browser on fully updated Windows 10 Machine.
Sample 2: This is from Safari browser in IMac of Tony Young, Jr.
Sample 3: This is Microsoft Edge browser of ILLUMINATION
Sample 4: This is Mi browser of Agnes Laurens
Sample 5: This is from Chrome browser of Agnes Laurens
Sample 6: This is from Chrome browser of Geetika Sethi
Sample 7: This is IoS browser of CR Mandler MAT
And Microsoft Edge on Windows 10 PC of CR Mandler MAT
Additional Evidence
To ensure it is not a browser problem from my end, I checked one of my articles from the Age of Awareness. Interestingly, from the same browser I use now, my article in this publication shows the banner.
So how can it be my browser?
Would my browser fancy Age of Awareness and disadvantage ILLUMINATION? I don’t think browsers would discriminate.
There are many more examples that I collected from writers and readers through our Slack channels and emails.
Those who are technical enough about publication settings can check my configuration.
Technical Issue: According to this configuration, Medium promises that my tabs would show both on the homepage and stories within my publication.
But the current Medium system does not deliver this technical promise.
I took all the required measures from my end as the owner of these publications. I also provided sufficient evidence about the incident.
What else can I do as a cooperating customer?
Conclusion
ILLUMINATION and ILLUMINATION-Curated have over 4,500 writers and 37,000 readers. We want to give a pleasant writing and reading experience to our customers. We designed our publication for that purpose. It has been working for six months. The banners from both publications disappeared out of nowhere yesterday.
We believe this issue is related to recent changes made on the Medium back-end systems.
Medium should take this incident seriously. Rather than sending brief messages asserting it is a browser problem, the root causes of this need to be examined.
Our readers and writers are our customers expecting a high-quality service from us. We are the customers of Medium and expect timely and meaningful service.
Thank you for reading.
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