For those who read the RSS feed...

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.
April 8, 2009 7:17 AM | | Comments (4)

4 Comments

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.

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

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.

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.

Leave a comment

Resources

Age of the audience 
Conventional wisdom: the classical music audience has always been the age it is now. Reality: It used to be younger -- dramatically younger, in fact. Here's some evidence -- primary sources (actual texts of old studies, links to NEA studies) -- plus two of my blog posts on this subject, and some anecdotal data.
more

earlier resources

Things I like

Dion on YouTube 
He's singing his first big hit in the balcony of a theater, with his group (aka two backup guys) the Belmonts. The song is gentle, and if you listen to the words, it's supposed to be sad. "Why must I be a teenager in love?" But Dion is cocky and confident, enjoying his easy triumph. So this -- in Milan Kundera's famous definition -- can't be kitsch. There's no subtext telling us that he knows he's being sad, because he's not being sad. But the song is honest. It's about something he might have felt before he was famous. And surely it catches the helpless longing all the girls listening to him felt, all the girls clapping dutifully, right on the beat (because we white people hadn't yet learned what a backbeat is).

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 
Smart, searing TV series. For instance: Cameron looks like a teenage girl, but really she's a killer robot from the future, reprogrammed to help people, rather than kill them. But she's still a killer. And though she tries to understand human beings, she can't grasp empathy. Someone finds a turtle on its back, and turns it over, so it can walk again. Why do that? Cameron asks. Later she attacks -- with unrelenting violence -- a friend of the people she's helping, because she thinks he's a liar. "Stop," she's told. She looks down at the man -- battered, groaning -- and with no expression turns him over.
 
Lucinda Williams, Little Honey 
Her most joyful album, but also her roughest -- very frayed, vocally, with edgiest band she's ever had. I don't know if I trust the joy (and I'm sad to say that), but she sounds like she's bitterly earned it.

Mantra for the arts 
From a New York Times Sunday piece on Wong Karwai, describing how he made his early film Ashes of Time:

"Mr. Wong was in a corner watching on a monitor. Every so often, in his measured way, he...called out to his cinematographer, Christopher Doyle, 'Is that all you can do?'

"Mr. Doyle, now a longtime collaborator of Mr. Wong's, said in a recent telephone interview that he heard that question as a constant challenge. 'It should be the mantra for all people in the arts.'"

more things

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Sandow published on April 8, 2009 7:17 AM.

Question from a music teacher was the previous entry in this blog.

Concert for the future is the next entry in this blog.

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