Comments in RSS

One of the arguments against full-text RSS feeds is that you can’t see any comments. With partial-text feeds, you need to go to the blog to finish reading what you’ve started, and that’s where you’ll find comments. If you can read the entire entry, the argument goes, you’ll have no incentive to visit the blog and thus the comments will go unread.

It’s a moot point now, at least for this blog. After several fits and starts with my templates, I’ve made the adjustment to deliver comments in my full-text feed. I’m sure it’s working in RSS 2.0, in any case.

You still need to visit the blog in order to add your own comment, but I suspect some enterprising aggregator author will figure that one out soon.

1. Hey tiger!

   This ‘comments-in-feed’ technology is fabulous! Bravo!

   Now, I await blogger introducing it into their feed technology (atom, I think…)

   Lee

   Posted by Lee Hopkins  on  07/04  at  07:02 PM

2. Hi Shel,
   this is way cool to read in NetNewsWire. The obvious question though, will the post be republished each time a comment is added?
   Best
   Sebastian

   Posted by Sebastian  on  07/05  at  01:31 AM

3. Good question, Sebastian. Only one way to find out!

   Posted by Shel Holtz  on  07/05  at  03:39 AM

4. And it gets republished when a trackback is sent as well!

   Posted by Sebastian  on  07/05  at  11:12 PM

5. James Farmer over at http://incsub.org uses a different method.  He lets you subscribe to email updates of comments you subscribe to.  You do that too.  That really promotes a conversation. 

   This method has also started a conversation of sorts, but I find it kind of irritating.  Is each comment really adding that much value to the average reader?

   Posted by Bud Gibson  on  07/06  at  03:25 AM

6. Well, I use Great News as my reader and I don’t get the feed republishing itself with each new comment or trackback.

   For example, whilst you posted your comment, Bud, it didn’t show up in my feed reader as a new post for the whole conversation. The only new post Great News picked up was Shel’s post about Skype for Outlook.

   The only way I found that you had commented, Bud, was because I was sent an auto-email.

   I love being able to read all the comments as well as the original post, now matter how short or long those comments are—definately a user-interface improvement as far as I am concerned.

   Posted by Lee  on  07/06  at  10:57 AM

7. Ahhh, but Bloglines refreshes the whole conversation and blog - so that, for instance, my previous comment has now put this post back at the top of the list of 31 new items for this blog.

   Score one point for GreatNews…

   Posted by Lee Hopkins  on  07/06  at  01:23 PM

8. Lee, I suspect that’s all based on the adjustments I made to the RSS template that BlogLines is picking up, right? BlogLines wasn’t getting comments before I did that, were they?

   Posted by Shel Holtz  on  07/06  at  01:53 PM

9. Arrgghh!!!  Now, this is where we enter into a discussion about the correlation between age and senile dementia…

   Hand on heart I cannot categorically say “No they didn’t appear”, but it’s been a couple of days since I last checked bloglines so they may have…

   However, I have just refreshed my bloglines list so nothing new currently appears for your blog. I’ll let you know what happens when I refresh the list again in a few minutes time…

   Posted by Lee Hopkins  on  07/06  at  02:07 PM

10. Well, it depends on how often your server pings bloglines, but it’s been a little while since the previous comment and nothing new appears in my bloglines list.

    BUT… even refreshing bloglines only shows up to comment #6, nothing past that.

    I’ll check back later today.

    Posted by Lee Hopkins  on  07/06  at  03:46 PM

11. Several hours later…

    Okay, bloglines now shows TWO new posts to ‘a shel of my former self’ - and they are both the same post - this one. This time both posts have all of my comments showing.

    Bizarre!  But GreatNews doesn’t show any ‘new posts’ - but when I look into the blog’s history it shows the trackback and only comments 1-3.

    This RSS stuff… technology, schmectology. RSS has been around for MONTHS now—you’d think someone would have fixed this by now! {wildly sarcastic grin}

    Posted by Lee  on  07/07  at  03:11 AM

12. Again I can report, none of those problems with NetNewsWire. It’s really like a refresh. Now that the podcatching can be done with iTunes I really think NNW is THE RSS-reader…
    @Bud: Maybe not each comment, but one great comments is often enought for me…

    Posted by Sebastian  on  07/07  at  03:28 AM

13. I’m using NetNewsWire Lite and every time somebody adds a comment the post shows as non-read and rises to the top of my view.  If all posts were like this it would probably render NNW Lite useless, at least as a way of viewing new content.  (new original post content, not new comment content).

    Posted by Andrew Marritt  on  07/07  at  04:36 AM