Full Content Feeds

Alex King asked about people’s preferences for full content and excerpt feeds. I explain why my RSS feeds are summary only, but my Atom feeds are full-content.

Last month, Alex asked for comments on Full Content feeds versus feeds with summaries. He asked two questions

• What do you offer in your feeds and why?
• How do you react to excerpts vs. full posts in feeds?

I’ve recently changed the way my feeds work and I figure that answering these questions kills two birds with one stone. It explains my thinking on the matter, and answers Alex’s question.

What do you offer in your feeds and why?

My Atom feed is full-content but my two RSS feeds are summaries only. As for why… I like Atom. I like the precise spec, I like the use of HTTP where possible, and I like the open development process. Basically, I think that the industry needs Atom for diversity & precision, thankfully syndication is still young enough to support a new format. Now, I have nothing against RSS, it has served us well for the past couple of years and it will continue to serve us in the future. I just don’t want to have to support two separate formats, so while I haven’t turned off my RSS feeds, I have removed the links to them, and as a subtle way of encouraging people to switch, I’ve made them ‘summary only’.

I’m keeping RSS around as there are some readers which don’t support atom. I may remove it in future, but it’s fine where it is for now

How do you react to excepts vs. full posts in feeds?

I prefer full posts, however excerpts are fine with me too providing they give me enough information to go on. Automatically generated excerpts (like slashdot’s) do annoy me though.