Full-Text Feeds are Dead
Let me illustrate to you why I don't put full text in my RSS feeds anymore.
From a NGOS search feed for the keyword “lockergnome,” I discovered a link to an
article that had been posted to our RSS channel:
No big deal, it's just a pointer… but it's pointing to another
pointer…
Which makes it a pointer pointing to another pointer pointing to another
pointer…
Which makes it a pointer pointing to another pointer pointing to another
pointer pointing to another pointer…
Which makes it a pointer pointing to another pointer pointing to another
pointer pointing to another pointer pointing to the actual article…
I'm one degree away from Kevin Bacon's blog! :) And
who knows if there's a pointer to the original pointer lying anywhere?! I love
link love, but imagine if full text had been provided in the original entry /
pointer? I'd have lost whatever visitor was crazy enough to click through that
sequence a full five times just to read the entry that was originally teased?
Sorry, but… it's likely to be partial feeds from here on out (and you can blame the robotic
scrapers, not me). One level is about as deep as I can encourage, lest the
multi-level entry be made by a human being.
I'm torn – I'm truly torn. And like the rest of the world, I'm trying to
figure out what to do. No answer is the perfect answer, and no path
is the best path. So, let me ask THIS – what are YOU doing (if anything)?
