John doesn’t want everything to be full-text

Surely the answer is that both full and extract should be on the feed; it's so little extra overhead. that way everyone has choice...

"I find that full-text feeds actually make it FASTER to scan. Why? Cause all the content is pre-loaded for me."

That's an unfair comment. Most posts have link(s) to the web and thus require you, anytime you click one of the links to 1) be online 2) to start a web browser session 3) wait for the page to load 4) get the ad banners in your face 5) read the document which can be of arbitrary length 6) perhaps click in one of the links of that document (and doing so iterate the whole thing all over again) 7) connect with the original idea of the poster

All of that means a lot of time spent. For each post and every feed.

RSS consumption means more web consumption. There is no work around that. Stop lying.

Anon: most posts I read can be consumed without following the links. I don't read a lot of link blogs. That's what Memeorandum is for.

And, even if you're right (which you are, somewhat), RSS still means I didn't need to load up the original post.

Excuse me if i'm wrong, but your feeds are partial-text. How can you complain when your own feeds aren't full-text?

Gvim: my feeds are both full text and partial text. Get a better RSS News Aggregator. NewsGator works fine with my feed.

I think we all know why most of the folks don't include the full text (like CNN giving article title only). They want you to go see their ADS. There, I said it. It's true, we all know it. I don't want ADS. I don't care about ADS. I don't care that they want me to see their ADS.

Making you click-more gives the appearance that blogs have a larger audience.

I know blogs that require 5 clicks if you wish to comment.

You never get the full representation in an XML version. You miss the HTML presentation, miss comments, more.

The issue was a non-starter from the get-go. The only thing that kept it alive was large amounts of non-listening talking.

I agree with Chris Wild above: put both in. Some feed readers (like Bloglines) let you pick which one you want. Should make everyone happy.

That presumes that you are using a feed format that supports both... for example: RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom 1.0. I support all three. That's what makes the fact that you have chosen to subscribe to my RSS 0.91 feed (summary only) to be a bit puzzling.

I also note that Tim Bray also has both a summary only and a full text feed - and that you have subscribed to the summary only one.

Theres an old saying, You can't judge a book by it's cover.

That's what non-full text feeds are like. Just headlines. If the headline doesn't interest me then I skip over it, meanwhile the article could have been GREAT.

Another thing about using RSS to escape ads, some of the feeds i subscribe to have ads in them, albit much more relevant, and much much less intrusive then going to the website itself.

Didn't Chris change his blog to be full-text a while back? Lockergnome isn't but at least his blog is.

Neither Shelley or Chris are typical bloggers. They both seem very selective about what they publish where, e.g. I find there's enough in Shelley's feed that goes to Planet RDF to tell whether or not I want to read the whole post. Ok, almost always the answer is yes on direct tech points. But because she regularly posts essay-length pieces, if I want to read some Shelley I'd go visit her site anyway to get the full experience. So I think there is some justification for non-full-length posts.

But having said that, for people that aren't submerged in the tech of syndication to Chris and Shelley's extent, where a choice has to be made, I would think it's better to err strongly on the side of full-length. Why? Simply because it's easier for an aggregator to make a summary from a full-length post, going the other way around is more effort (having to scrape the original post).

One part of the problem has to be that people don't tend to have very useful summary versions - arbitrary length cropping doesn't give a clear picture of the content as a whole. But I'm optimistic as Atom creeps onto developer's radars we'll see more care taken about summary vs. full-text, making it easier to skim productively. (Maybe I'll get around to writing summaries...and meaningful titles...).

So, if I am to understand your position - "full text" means you want the entire item in the "content:encoded" tag but it is OK to have a summary in the "description" tag? That's what your blog does.

Only asking because I'm in the process of designing my feed.

Innocent: Right. It works fine in NewsGator. I get full text feeds in NewsGator.

I don't want the HTML. I find that makes it harder to read the content. I want control of my reading experience. RSS gives me that. I try to avoid people who force me to visit their Web site to read their content (no matter what the motivation).

The great thing about the net is that one size does not fit all. Some like partial feeds, some like full. It seems to me Bobby that you're implying that somehow the author is losing out if you (by you, I mean you) don't read his post. The reality is that you're likely the one to miss an interesting point or post. If you are reading offline there is something to be said for full feeds but for those not addicted to being in touch with what's happening on the network 24/7 partial feeds and summaries work just fine and it's not harder to click one extra link and load a page than it is to read it in a aggregator. It's like the stance on "fire marketers without feeds on marketing sites". It's a whole lot of evangelising tools and not really providing solutions that help people manage and grow a business.

When the only tool one uses is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail...

Bubba: I'm very unlikely to miss any interesting post. Believe me, if something is interesting that I'm not subscribed to it's very likely that one of the other 740 people will see it and link to it.

It's pretty obvious you've never tried to read 740 feeds because of your attitude here.

I'm glad it's obvious because I have other things I'd rather do with my time. Not meaning to be confrontational but if you want to read 740 feeds, great. Even better that you get paid for it. Kudos though it's not a gig for me. That's the point, one size does not fit all.

I keep track of just south of 100 and regularly (as in daily) read perhaps 30 or so. If someone like Battelle or either of the Gilmors or Doc or Lessig or Mena or Chuqi write something, I usually hit the site instead of reading the feed. Some of the other stuff I find interesting is the bouncer in NY that got a book deal from his blog, the film school grad that is trying to make it in Hollywood or the big time screenwriter that shares insight to the movie biz. I don't know that your 740 would have found those.

Riddle me this Bobby... Of those 740 feeds, how much of that is echosphere offering circular linking rather than real input and insight on the issue? Are you really sure that everything those mavens post are finding every interesting post of the millions of blogs and sites on the network? Like I said, if you read offline it is handy though personally I'd rather listen to Gilmor Gang, Rowdy Racing or TWIT (among others) when I'm offline. The stance of not reading partial feeds I think is imposing an arbitrary boundry that has no direct correlation to the actual content. To me it seems that by stating you don't read partial feeds repeatedly, that somehow if you (as in you I mean you) don't read the feed than somehow it's less relevant, insightful or useful to others.

BTW, I do provide a full feed...

I work at a pretty large web site and have a pretty good feeling that we're not going to go full text in the near future because it's disruptive to the business model (advertising) that our entire site is built on.

When you're a blogger like Scoble and are building your site out for professional reputation or even just passion, it's easy to demand that everyone have full text feeds. When tens of thousands of dollars are in the balance daily for ad revenues alone, it makes things a little different.

I know people are supposed to embrace the disruptive and popular technologies or else be called "dinosaurs" but when you're in a conference room trying to sell the idea that, hey, let's put our full stories in our RSS feeds, you get very concerned stares back at you asking very good, reasonable questions. These questions don't fear the disruption... they're asking how to handle it. At which point, I read Scoble and Gillmor and see that they've got nothing to contribute to that answer.

I understand it's what you want, but I look out at the marketplace and see that the most mainstream RSS aggregators, My Yahoo and Google IG, make the full text feed more or less useless. I have traffic numbers to show that the launch of My Yahoo, for example, is noticeable in our RSS traffic.

Just a thought.... I'm generally with you on this, Robert, but contextual ads and those type of ads-in-RSS don't really replace the revenue that might be lost from lost ad impressions. Second, the market so far is showing that full text feeds aren't that important (see My Yahoo/Google IG).

Sujal

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Why? Because there are so many great feeds out there that I just don’t have time for people who don’t treat me the way I want to be treated.
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I think we all know why most of the folks don’t include the full text (like CNN giving article title only). They want you to go see their ADS. There, I said it. It’s true, we all know it. I don’t want ADS. I don’t care about ADS. I don’t care that they want me to see their ADS.
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WOW. I can't believe how much entitlement there is here. You want it all, the way you want, and for free. Not cost to you. You just want to sit there and consume. "Give me stuff! I'm entitled to it!"

Fair enough, your choice, and there is content available out there without ads and without cost. But if you cry when daddy takes the T-bird away, you'll deserve a smack on the mouth.

Scoble. I totally agree. I also unsubscribed from Chris Pirilo -- actually before you even wrote this post over the very thing, lack of full feeds. I suppose if I found someone super compelling I'd probably still hang on to the feed. In general though if it doesn't have full feeds I'm pretty much not going to read it. It's rare that something brilliant enough isn't picked up by someone else.

Plus throw in things like Memeorandum and Digg now and it's even that much harder to keep up on RSS reading.

Right now I,m organizing my RSS feeds into 10 folders based on where my blogging interest is at the present time.

1. Flickr News (Technorati, PubSub, Google, etc. searches, Flickr staff blogs, flickr blog, etc.) I use this for my FlickrNation blog and podcast.

2. Flickr Photo Blogs (great way to track terrific photos blogged from flickr by various bloggers)

3. Microsoft News (same Technorati, PubSub, Google, Yahoo! etc. searches plus things like Mary Jo Foley, and Todd Bishop and Neowin, etc.)

4. Music and mp3 blogs (copy, right is my favorite)

5. Photography (general photography blogs)

6. Podcasts (where I collect the podcasts that I download regularly)

7. San Francisco (regional stuff)

8. Short List (my most commonly viewed folder, stuff that I have to see every day including your own blog)

9. Long List (other good in my opinion 2nd tier blogs and sites for when I have time)

10. Fresh List (where I put great new feeds that I find. They stay there until I decide if I should put them in the short list, long list, or toss them.)

At present I'm subscribed to about 209 feeds. I find this is the best organizational structure that works for me.

Why isn't there an RSS reader with tagging is beyond me ::sigh::

Dork. ;) Check yo' facts before you spread da lies! Been full text for months now...

Stefan,

www.rojo.com has the ability to tag feeds.

Rojo has a horrible UI and just isn't responsive to me at all.