A couple of new LWN features [LWN.net]

A couple of new LWN features

Posted Apr 27, 2009 20:48 UTC (Mon) by jpetso (guest, #36230)
Parent article: A couple of new LWN features

Speaking of feeds: I understand the desire to track incoming RSS people in
order to distinguish them from the other folks. However,
http://lwn.net/Articles/$n/rss is really tedious in its current form. I
don't click on "Read more" (in my feed reader) to see the same teaser once
again, I'd much rather prefer to view the actual article - which might in
turn be a teaser, but at least has comments and all.

In other words... can you please, please make that RSS landing page a
redirect to the proper one? Or drop it altogether and just link the feed
to the real article? That would be awesome.

to post comments

/rss

Posted Apr 27, 2009 21:33 UTC (Mon) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (5 responses)

The /rss view was added in response to requests from other RSS users; links would go through to something that was often just an announcement mail from somewhere and lose the text we had added. I'm not quite sure how to get that really right...

/rss

Posted Apr 27, 2009 22:33 UTC (Mon) by jpetso (guest, #36230) [Link]

I can only imagine that this is wanted by users who let their feed reader
display the feed item as "complete" HTML page (the site the feed links to)
instead of the feed itself. I cannot really figure out why such users
would complain about a characteristic that they have (hopefully?) enabled
by themselves. Or maybe some weird web-based feed reader dismisses the
feed item altogether and only shows the linked items, which is the only
case I can think of that might trigger the request for the /rss page.

Anyways, here's a version that should satisfy both regular users and
whatever weirdos who came up with this braindead idea: In the feed item,
you add a link "Complete article" as part of the regular feed item text,
and everything else (including the real "link" property that points to the
/rss page) stays the same as it is now. The /rss page also stays the same,
and does not get the added link from the feed item.

That way, I've got (a) the teaser / editorial comment in the feed item,
(b) a link to the actual content and comments in the feed item too, and
(c) nothing changes for the folks who view the linked HTML instead of the
feed item.

/rss

Posted Apr 30, 2009 19:26 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link] (3 responses)

Is there any chance you could publish the RSS links a bit more widely (e.g. using the appropriate HTML meta tags, so that Firefox, Epiphany, etc.. show the RSS icon in the status bar and allow the user to easily subscribe)?

Thanks! :)

Also, I'd like to +1/me too/second the previous "can we have per-article RSS feeds?" comment.

/rss

Posted Apr 30, 2009 19:36 UTC (Thu) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link] (2 responses)

The main RSS feed is in the HTML metatags, and it does appear in the Firefox URL bar. I'm not quite sure where to put the other feeds; I guess the comments feed could go on pages under /Comments.

Per-article RSS feeds have a couple of practical problems. One is simply server load; we'd go from one cached feed to potentially thousands of uncached ones. And I have this real fear of the server collapsing under the load of thousands of feeds attached to articles which haven't seen comments in years.

I've pondered an alternative: a single per-reader RSS feed where each reader could flag specific articles for inclusion. That would mix the comments from various articles, but it would eliminate the need to deal with lots of different feeds, which should make life easier for readers too.

The "email notifications for any comments on this article" idea will happen at some point. The biggest obstacle there is just usability issues; I worry that adding more buttons to every article risks making site harder to deal with. It just needs some thought.

/rss

Posted Apr 30, 2009 23:50 UTC (Thu) by knobunc (guest, #4678) [Link] (1 responses)

Thanks for the feedback. I'd love a customizable feed... The real win of the per-thread one would be grouping of related comments, but I should take that up with my feed reader (BlogBridge) I suppose.

BTW where does the "your unread comments" page actually get linked to on the site?

Thanks, -ben

/rss

Posted May 1, 2009 1:44 UTC (Fri) by corbet (editor, #1) [Link]

> BTW where does the "your unread comments" page actually get linked to on the site?

It's in the FAQ but not in too many other places. The site navigation needs some thought, I know; we have a lot of things to link to.