Brice on 03/22/2004:

It's odd that you seem to bring this up just as I'm taking a rather dull class on web architecture, which is partially focused on web enabling technologies like RSS. You're point that RSS seems very odd in its use and even a little confusing actually falls short of just how screwed up RSS is. There are actually three different definitions for what RSS even stands for: Really Simple Syndication, RDF Site Summary and Rich Site Summary. In the end, any RSS feed reader is stuck with interpretting three significantly different XML files.

The beauty of what you bring up, what is RSS even for, I think gets at the reason there are so many people fighting over the RSS format itself. The RDF-based feed, while slightly more complicated, provides an easier mechanism for joining RSS feeds with other RDF information, which might not even be encoded as XML. In that sense, the author of the feed doesn't really need to provide more information than would be normally present in a cross-reference. As one of the other definitions hints, RSS is supposed to be used as a summary; so does that mean that one should provide full text? Would that still be a summary?

When I finally get off my lazy ass (or more correctly overworked ass) and actually finish an RSS feed for my journal, I plan to provide full content like you do. However, seeing how much trouble people go through when they want to make a standard, I can't see actually defining that RSS must contain either a summary or full content. The important part is that a channel and any associated items must have a globally unique identifier such that a reader can find out more information about the story or reference it without any confusion.

Roy on 03/23/2004:

Thank you for saying exactly how I feel regarding RSS feeds.

As a response to Brice, I'm not sure that the fact that RSS is three different "things" really matters. Forgetting the history of Netscape and Userland in regards to the RSS spec, what matters is that people now, whether they are publishing the Rich Site Summary, Really Simple Syndication, or RDF need to start publishing the full content feeds. The concept behind RSS is to be able to access all content from outside the webpage; using the one-sentence format completely obfuscates the purpose of RSS.

In the end, none of us could care which flavor of RSS you're using; it only really matters to the developers.

Tomas on 03/23/2004:

I'm using a rss/atom-reader which is just a sidepanel in Mozilla, that way switching between browser and rss/atom-reader is transparent, since they are one and the same. But, yeah, I used to think switching to a browser was annoying, back when I was using rss/atom-reader applications. But when there is no switching between applications like that, it doesn't really matter to me if the feed has only an excerpt or not. I prefer to read the entries on the weblogs themselves anyways (as opposed to in the rss/atom-reader).

Pete on 03/23/2004:

"Really Simple Syndication, RDF Site Summary and Rich Site Summary"

Hmmm...I'd say the clue to whether a feed should be full posts or a summary is in the name isn't it? (well 2 out of 3 isn't bad). :)

A year and a half ago someone wrote to Sam Ruby essentially saying "cut the personal crap"!. There was a big uproar where many people turned around and said "what I write is down to me. nobody has the right to tell me what i should and shouldn't include on my site". Surely the same applies to feeds and how they're presented doesn't it?

I use the Mozilla reader Tomas uses which only gives me an excerpt from each post of your current feed, and yet here I am reading and commenting so something must be working. If the content is good I'll visit anyway, full posts or not.

Paul Mison on 03/23/2004:

Mark Pilgrim includes full posts in his Atom feed, which is supported in NetNewsWire 1.0.9 betas.

I believe he decided to do that because of the mess that the RSS specs have instead of a simple answer to the question "should I embed (X)HTML in my RSS feed, and if so, how?".

I'm grateful that he does, because at my default browser width his site - like others that use similar templates - the content drops off the left hand side of the browser, with no scrollbar allowing you to visit it, and he's too good a writer to miss just because of his choice of HTML design.

Greg on 03/23/2004:

At best, newsreaders should be used to notify a person of updates. I don't use readers myself. I enjoy going to the real website to get the whole experience. That said, I know there are others who like them so my feed provides headline and teaser text only.

Brahm Windeler on 03/23/2004:

Garrett, I'll be interested to see how your rewrite of the site works out. I've been kicking around the same idea for a while now but have been too lazy to fight with Movable Type. :P

I, too, find RSS feeds that are one sentence long (or none, in the case of Slashdot) very annoying. I don't think problem is necessarily that the full text isn't in the RSS entry, it's that the one sentence is rarely sufficient to determine whether the entry is worth reading. You mention that this is done to encourage people to visit the actual web page. I think for sites with heavy traffic, this is also done to reduce bandwidth consumption, as some people have unnecessarily too frequent RSS feed polling settings in their news readers.

On the other end of the scale, and perhaps it's just the RSS reader I use, but sometimes I find that long entries with multiple paragraphs and special formatting (this one included) are easier to read directly on the website since the formatting is stripped in the feed.

I think that if RSS feeds are most useful when they contain summaries or, at the bare minimum, meaningful excerpts for long entries. Most people are too lazy to write summaries, though, including myself, and summaries for short entries are usually unnecessary. On my own blog I've elected to have the first 100 words of each entry placed automatically into the RSS feed by default, but that can be replaced for a given entry if I feel a summary would be better. I'm usually pretty good about writing an entry so that the first 100 words will give the reader enough information to decide whether it's worth going to the web site to read the full entry.

Brice on 03/23/2004:

For Roy - What I was getting at was that there are certain situations, mostly in the area of copyright, where a publisher would be very opposed to publishing full content of a periodical. It is therefore not possible to mandate a standard that would actually be followed if it required that people do things that are in the best interests of everyone but them. I used the example of how many people can't agree on even something as simple as the name of RSS to show how much argument there is among the developers of RSS about what it should be used for.

The professor teaching the class introduced RSS as something to be used primarily as an aggrigator and that it typically will increase the readership a website. I think that's the spirit of the readers used by Tomas and Pete. For me, I would prefer to let my readers decide if they wanted to just read the brief description of what I write (which is probably all that most people would do as I typically write garbage) than to decide for them by only publishing a description. If Tomas and Pete are interested then they can go and read the full content, but the entire point of what I'm arguing is that if we really want people to use RSS, no one can ask everyone to do what you want just because it's annoying you. As my professor is very involved with some of the various web standards (mostly digital library stuff), he claims that such flexibility must be present even if the developers know the way that things should be implemented.

In the end, the best standards are usually those that allow for structured flexibility. Such a novel statement ... completely meaningless in its obviousness. I think the key is the structure and it bothers me that RSS lacks a truly defined culture as its developers fight over what the proper format should be (RSS versions: .9 v. 1.0 v. 2.0). If they're going to go anywhere they should really start with a clear format and then tackle implementation issues.

Omar McFarlane on 03/24/2004:

Oh my gosh Garrett, I'm in love with you right now. Two days ago I decided to jump on the news reader bandwagon as a means of getting back some of my time as part of the whole appeal of them is "know that a site you like has updated and here is the content in a convenient place." I was all for this, got the lite version of NNW to see if I could get used to not opening Safari and running around my usual bookmarks and I was apalled at the fact that the majority of the weblogs I frequented only put up a sentence and a half worths of what was going on and that I still had to go to their site. Now like some people mentioned it's their choice and GoogleAds or whatever, but I think that they shouldn't bother doing something like that if they're not going to maximize its ability. I don't fax someone to tell them to call me. That's what this seems like to me. I'd imagine someone could manage to twist something to throw text ads and the bottom/ top of posts in news readers and I'd have no problem with that, but don't defeat the purpose of these news readers.

I'm sorry for ranting on your website, but I didn't have my own to do it on and I really wanted to say something about it. And I totally agree with Brice on the last comment. These are supposed standards with three implementations and then the Atom factor. All this and I still get a hyperlink back to a website. Pointless, I think so.

Case on 03/25/2004:

Think about the name for a second. Newsreaders. NetNewsWire. Think news headlines, useful updates, with excerpts of an article so you can decide to read further or not. Newsreaders are best used for a headline and a few lines of text, as a way of signaling the availability of new content. Not full articles, or images. If the site is well designed thats where you should be accessing the content.

And if you want to read more how hard is it to press 'b' or click on a link?

Jonathan on 03/25/2004:

Right on brother Garrett! Give 'em hell! I love it when you voice your opinions.