For those who read the RSS feed…

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If you take the troubleto read this blog on the Web, you get one thing the RSS feed can’t give you. (And believe me, I understand the convenience of RSS feeds.) 

What you’ll get are the comments from so many people, which are often more compelling than my posts. Extensive discussions go on, with people debating and amplifying each other, as well as me. 

The comments, as I’ve often said, are one of the best things about this blog.

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Comments

  1. says

    Do bear in mind that there are those of us who do both: read by RSS, then click through to your blog to read on and comment.

    You might want to consider limiting the amount of text that your RSS feed displays. That way, you’d encourage readers to come to the blog to continue reading – and start commenting on – what they began reading in the feed. (That’s what I do, anyway.)

    FK

    Thanks for the thought, FK. I’ll try to find out how to do that. Though I’d want to survey readers first, to find out if this wouldn’t bother a lot of people.

  2. Richard Mitnick says

    Greg-

    I am not sure what you mean. I read via the RSS, and I find comments, and sometimes I even dare to make a comment. But, I keep the feed for quite a while and I check back, to see if my comment is in and to see if you responded and to see other comments.

    I do believe that via the feed I am seeing everything. I am going to do both for a while to see if I find any difference.

    Maybe I’m talking from complete ignorance here. I had one reader who was surprised to find the comments, when she went to the blog on the web, after only reading it via RSS. Maybe it depends on your RSS reader. But, either way, the comments are terrific, including yours, Richard.

    >>RSM

  3. says

    Greg-

    Here is a possible answer: Posts and comments do not show up immediately in the feed readers. I use MyYahoo! Sometimes I will see a new post, but it will be marked as being from 3-10 hours past.

    So, one could go to your weblog and see what is immediately there, and then check in the feed reader and the content of the weblog, including any comments could be missing.

    So, let’s say there is a post to the weblog, where it is immediately available, and it shows up in the feed after three hours, but then there is a comment after four hours. That comment may not show up for again, 3-10 hours in the feed, while it is immediately available in the blog.

    In any case, my friend, this is not your problem. You do incredibly great work. The rest is in the hands of the internet gods, and no on has yet figured them out.

  4. Michael Korman says

    No, please do not shorten the text in the feed. I read a lot of blogs, and there is no way I can read the comments on every post of every one of those. I assume most people understand the concept that the feed has just the article text, and if they want the comments, they’ll have to visit the site.