Other people's RSS feeds...

Posted June 6, 2003 9:58 PM.

A few things that drive me insane about some other people's RSS feeds which make the experience of reading their posts via a newsreader like NetNewsWire less simple, pleasant and consistent:

Excerpt-only RSS-feeds...
Now before I start, yes I know that RSS feeds were originally designed to simply place site headlines on other people's sites. I think we can also hold as axiomatic that there are probably problems with the large-scale delivery of RSS feeds. And yes - I do appreciate that there are problems in tracking the number of meaningful times a page has been viewed via an RSS reader and that there are consequences in ripping blocks of writing unceremoniously from their individual design contexts. Even know all of this, I think I can say with reasonable authority that providing full entries in your RSS feed has become a de facto standard (and those places that haven't done that unilaterally are increasingly supplying multiple feeds). Providing full feeds makes it possible for people to easily sync your most recent content to their computer (if they're using a desktop app) and read it in completely different places - like on the train or in the bus). More importantly, for those of us who read most of our regular sites through a newsreader, it's just profoundly annoying.
Not linking to comments (if enabled)...
Not everyone can have comments on their sites. Not everyone wants comments on their sites. If they can and do want comments on their sites, they might not want them on every entry. Help us out! If there are going to be comments on your entry, then find a way to show us through your RSS feed. The code I use to include a link to the comments in my 0.91 RSS feed (for example) is: <description><$MTEntryBody encode_xml="1"$> <MTEntryIfAllowComments><![CDATA[<p><a href="<$MTEntryPermalink encode_xml="1"$>#comments">Read the comments</a></p>]]> </MTEntryIfAllowComments></description>
Citing the number of comments after each entry...
This may seem counter-intuitive, but think about it. Every time your entry changes, my newsreader picks up those changes and marks 'read' entries as 'unread'. This is really useful if there's been an update to that entry, but less useful if it's going to happen every single time someone posts a new comment. Particularly if you subscribe to a number of different sites (or you're tracking something like Jason's Matrix Reloaded thread
Only putting in two or three recent entries...
I may only get the opportunity to catch up with my subscriptions once a day or maybe even once every couple of days. If you're only going to show me the most recent two or three entries on your RSS feed, then it's more than possible that I'd come to my reader to discover that every article on your feed remains unread. But what about the ones that have already dropped off? How will I ever know they exist unless I make a special effort to come to your site to check? And if that's your hope, then give it up - more likely I'll just never know that post existed.
Making the link attribute refer to the site you're talking about rather than the permalink for your entry...
Again - I don't care which is right and which is wrong. The de facto standard for the link attribute in your RSS entry should be its permalink on your site (if at all possible), otherwise an internal anchor to the specific post on your site's front-page. If you take this second option could you please make sure that the front-page of your site has the same number (or more) of entries on it as your RSS feed...

I should point out - there's an arcane quality to the mechanics behind RSS feeds and RDF that I understand only gesturally. If I've said something profoundly stupid, then I apologise straight-away... This post was partially inspired by the release of a new RSS reader: Shrook [via Tesugen].

Comments

Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.

Hi, I'm the author of Shrook, and this is going to sound like an advert, but I hope you find it interesting too. Shrook supports guid tags which mean the entry isn't identified by its content, which means problem 3 goes away. I wish they were more common, they solve other problems too. Also Shrook can hang on to old entries which helps with problem 4, though not if you've been away a while.

All of your points were definitely worth raising though, and thanks for linking me.

→ Posted by: Graham at June 7, 2003 12:51 AM

Hi Graham - no I don't think it sounds like an advert. Thanks for coming and giving us your perspective. While we've got you here though - can I ask you a couple of questions about Shrook? 1 Why "Shrook"? 2 Do you think that by having "refresh when clicked on" option might cause site owners problems by increasing their RSS traffic even more than before? 3 I'm particularly interested in why you chose to use the drawer for listing weblogs rather than incorporating it into the interface in three-panes like NetNewsWire?

→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 7, 2003 2:36 PM

1. Shrook was the name on a random headstone in an episode of Dark Angel. I thought it was a cool word and I never thought of anything better to call it. 2. Not really - by default it's set to only check links if the channel is just about to be checked anyway (there's an option in preferences for how out of date the channel needs to be before the check when clicked thing kicks in). Anyway, if channels support conditional downloading, bandwidth becomes much less of a problem. I also have a plan to reduce checking bandwidth enormously, but it's a bit of a secret for now. 3. Because Mail looks much meater than NNW. NNW's single window feels really bulky and restrictive, and horizontal and vertical dividers don't look good where they meet. It seemed like the logical thing to do.

→ Posted by: Graham at June 7, 2003 6:11 PM

I admit, i know nada about RSS. But i have me a reader, having finally found one which isn't awful for the PC (Newz Crawler, if you want to know). And the intriguing thing is that on my reader, about half of the plasticbag posts are restricted. Thus the On Camden post doesn't show except for the title, but i do get a lovely picture of the cherry cake. The RSS post doesn't come up either. This fits a patterns of other sites - some have all there posts readable in window, some have some, and some have none except excerpts. So 3 questions. 1. How do I make sure all posts appear in window, so i can do it for my sites? 2. Whats going on with yours? 3. Is this all something to do with PCs not working as well as Macs for this?

→ Posted by: James Crabtree at June 8, 2003 5:38 PM

When you say restricted, what precisely do you mean? It's quite possible that my site's RSS feeds don't validate properly - I'll check into that immediately. Is it the same for both of them? In the meantime, I'll have a word with Mr Hammersley. I can't believe there still aren't any decent newsreaders for the PC though, so it might very well be my fault...

→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 8, 2003 6:29 PM

Rembering at all times that i'm a fumbling novice, and could be making some elementary bungle, what happens is pretty much what i said. In the text window, some of the blog posts appear in full, with pictures and so forth, while others get nothing but the title. So, On Camden, you get the headline, a link to the story, and a link saying "read the comments". On but on the others (Tom Coates family fun, your clay post) you get the lot. 9 out of the 15 posts i have are blank, with the rest giving the text in full.

Most of the sites on the reader, though, just give links, and you have to open the site in window. Our iWire site works like that. On the other hand, Kevin Werbach's post all come up in full.

So. Is it something to with how the blog is set-up (i.e. difference between MT, Blogger, Radio, etc) or is it the way i've set up the reader? I'm quite in the dark.....

→ Posted by: James Crabtree at June 8, 2003 6:46 PM

I think what RSS contains depends on where you come from. If its about syndication, then its 50/50 whether you syndicate (i.e. distribute content that other sites/applications can consume) the whole content or just an excerpt. If you desire the reader of the syndicated content to come visit your site for a 'fuller' user experience, that suggests that you give an excerpt or teaser that draws them in. If they aren't interested, they won't cause you extra bandwidth.

If you are just 'putting it out there' then you are not so interested in attracting people to your site specifically, and therefore you should include all of the content for an entry.

Lets face it, blogger are probably the most prevalent users of RSS feeds at the moment. Bloggers use RSS feeds because it allows them to identify which of the many other sites they are interested in have changed since they last viewed it. Given that bloggers like to provide solicit and give feedback for posts, and that RSS doesn't have the ability to include feedback information, you need the viewer to come to the site to provide that feedback. Therefore, for the blogger community, RSS really only needs an except, or possibly just a headline (although my personal opinion is that the headline must be descriptive enough to allow the viewer to know if they are going to be interested in the post, and therefore an excerpt is probably the best approach).

I don't think there is a 'correct' definition of whats in an RSS feed, as long as the timing is right. It depends on the producer and the consumer. My feeling is that feeds are simple notifications, not another way of presenting whats on my site. It does nothing for my bandwidth if I put all my frontpage content into a feed that gets checked every hour.

As for the number of entries, this is about timing. As my site content is about the now, once entries go over a certain age they become less relevant. I imagine (although I might be wrong) that most RSS consumers go for some sort of scheduled update - either they let the reader check and notify them, or they read on a regular basis. As a result, my feed contains as many entries as I've created in the last week. If someones going to subscribe to my feed, I assume that the last week is about as relevant as they need. Just putting the last 10, 20 or 50 entries in the feed assumes nothing, other than that you can't define your audience or the relevance of your writing.

→ Posted by: Dave Meehan at June 8, 2003 9:14 PM

I'll agree with your last point - I think it's quite easy to say that 3 posts is too little, even if it's harder to say what's 'enough'. Your first point I have more trouble with. Certainly webloggers do use RSS feeds as update monitors. But because of the fragmentary nature of weblogs, it's actually quite time consuming to visit lots of sites even if you know they have updated. Let's put it this way - since I got NetNewsWire, I now read about five times as many weblogs a day. I find it much easier to keep track of, less time consuming and that allows me to do more - if people don't just put in excerpts. That's the point of sale thing - that people who are reading your site find it easier to read you - they're more likely to read you - if your full post is in your RSS feed. If you don't like that, or you don't think people need the whole thing, then give them the choice! Provide two feeds! The bandwidth issue is important though and needs to be addressed as soon as we can...

→ Posted by: Tom Coates at June 9, 2003 12:30 AM

Well, I'm a total dunce about RSS feeds. But this interested me a bit. I picked something up here: http://www.fortysomething.ca/mt/etc/archives/002174.php -- I don't think this does precisely what you mean, but maybe close.

My feed is http://www.chezchrissie.co.uk/index.xml ... how does it work for you? Any changes or improvements you could suggest? I really haven't got a clue what I'm doing! But I have noticed a couple of people accessing my site with a feedreader, so I would like to provide the best, flexible content I can.

Thanks for making me think. My head hurts, but thanks. :)

→ Posted by: chrissie at June 11, 2003 10:27 PM

I have to disagree with you on point number 3. I want to know how many comments are available on any given entry, and I want to know that an entry has new comments. Adjusting the title of the entry with the number of comments is a dirty way of doing this, but it works. Comments end up being lost, hard to find, generally something too much other than than the actual entry unless some method of tracking is provided. And that's a shame. We are trying to have conversations here, right? So I've implemented what I found in Stewart Butterfield's RSS. I rather like it.

→ Posted by: Chris at June 11, 2003 10:55 PM

Re: RSS readers for Windows. I've heard insanely great things about FeedDemon from beta testers. Not publicly available yet though, maybe by the end of this month. http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/

→ Posted by: Mark at June 19, 2003 7:09 PM

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