Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Full Feed?

Someone asked me to start publishing a full feed, which I have done in the past and stopped doing. I get the advantage, you can read the whole post on your feed reader. So here's the deal...I'll do it if you promise that you will still comment just as much as you do now. 'Cause see, I like comments -- a lot. And only about 1-2% of the people who read any given post comment as it is, but well, promise full feeds won't make it worse?

About feed readers: Google Reader is better than Bloglines. It doesn't periodically lose a feed for days or weeks. If you are using Bloglines, it is easy to switch. Just go to the Google home page, click the carrot next to "more" and the top and select Reader. The instructions are very easy, I promise. You can pull your whole subscription list over in one fell swoop.

When Google Reader gets a post, it keeps it. Inside my reader I can click on someone's blog and see every post for as long as I have been subscribed. I can even search...you know in case I want to know how many times Innocent Observer has mentioned that she is STILL PREGNANT. [Answer: eleven posts since she hit the 9 month mark. Keep 'em coming though honey...it's the best fascinating story on the web. I'm considering starting a pool.]

ETA: Google Reader also does not mark a post as new every time it is edited. This is good if you are reading someone like me who regularly goes back and fixes typos, adds labels, and sometimes even links. It is bad if you miss important added paragraphs like this one -- although if you are missing it because you are already using Google you don't need to read it!

To be fair, Google Reader has one significant flaw: for some reason it tends to get blogger blogs HOURS late. It doesn't lose a feed for days, but they can come in 3 to 10 hours late on a regular basis.

Don't know what a reader is? If you go to Google Reader (or one of the others) you can "subscribe" to all the blogs you read by copying the URL (eg. http:/pflagfostermom.blogspot.com) and pasting it into the window that says "subscribe." Do that with all the blogs you read and you will thereafter be able to read all your blogs on one page - no more surfing and checking endlessly.

ETA 2: Oh...and by the way, the point of this post was to find out if y'all really want me to publish a full feed and if you promise to comment at least as much as you do now if I do.

8 comments:

  1. I will have to go subscribe to that. Now I have to keep those simple directions handy so I can figure it out. Remember..my brain doesn't work right now. ;-)

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  2. I don't think the delay in getting updates of Blogger blogs is limited to Google Reader. I use FeedReader for my RSS feeds, and it gets Blogger updates way late, too.

    I don't know if the issue is that Blogger doesn't update the RSS feed at the same time a new post is made, or what, but I've noticed the same behavior. It annoys me greatly.

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  3. I have not had good luck with any of the feed readers, so I just visit everyone's site every day. Your post made me laugh out loud; thanks!

    Kerry

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  4. I will just keep reading your blog the regular way.

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  5. Dear G-d, let's not confuse me anymore than is absolutely neccessiary! It's bad enough that I can't spell the same word the same way two days running! I got a new laptop and am off and running. i'm going to see just how far I can chunk that old pc!

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  6. Apparently I just can not be bothered or motivated to sign up for any of those fancy blog reader thingys. That is why I will sometimes check all my favorites several times in one day- annoying aren't I. I equate my blog checking to someone who has to be always flipping channels on the remote control. Sorry, but what would I do without it?

    I will comment as usual.

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  7. Bloglines does everything you say Google does, except I get to choose whether to keep posts (so I know which ones I want to reread for a link or other purposes) AND choose whether I was to see editted posts. One person, for instance, due to a comment I made changed a link in her post. If I didn't have the choice to see edited ones, I would have known she's changed it. (On most, I choose to see edits since you never know what they'll add.)

    And I've only had it lose a feed for short periods of times.

    I promise to comment if you go to full feeds. Have to admit I don't comment a whole lot, but I do when somethings' really good and interesting! :)

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  8. Truthfully, I am much less likely to make comments if I have the full feed in my Google Reader. Not that I've been very good about commenting much around here, anyway, but...

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Comments will be open for a little while, then I will be shutting them off. The blog will stay, but I do not want either to moderate comments or leave the blog available to spammers.