Comments on: Do You Prefer Full Or Partial Feeds?

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 23:54:03 +0000

Thanks Yuri and good to know. I hadn’t realized how much of an issue this was for some people, but I do now and the more I think about it the more I’m glad I made the switch to full feeds.

By: Yuri

Yuri — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 15:31:03 +0000

For me the decision has always been about KISS: to remove one click a reader has to make to read the feed. I am particularly annoyed by partial feeds that you have to click through and open a new window. The blogs that have such feeds don’t have me reading their less interesting posts from me.

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 22:06:39 +0000

I hadn’t realized how passionate some people are about feeds. Sreejith I’m finding more people like you who refuse to subscribe to partial feeds (I’m glad you made an exception for me). I have switched to full feeds and think I’ll keep the full feeds on.

By: Sreejith Ramakrishnan

Sreejith Ramakrishnan — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 07:52:41 +0000

You see, Steven, the whole reason I’m a little less “Rss-hippy” is because of the sh*tty partial RSS feeds. I hate RSS for that. If I get only partial reading why can’t I just go to the site to read ?

And, I’ve deleted every partial feed in my feed reader that instant except your feed, Steven (I’ve my own reasons ). And, I myself publish full feeds. I think, just because you have the risk of getting into scraper sites, doesn’t mean you should let your readers down.

Especially for readers through Mobile platforms, RSS is a boon. I’ve put a “Creative Common” license and a Copyscape DONOT COPY logo(not in feed) in my site and feed and I think its enough protection. Moreover, I always go to copyscape to search for copied content.

By: Steven Bradley

Steven Bradley — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 19:52:57 +0000

Thanks for letting me know your preferences.

When I thought about it the scraping issue isn’t really a big concern for me. My blog is picked up by the iEntry network with my permission so it appears in full on sites like WebProNews. When I’ve come across a site scraping my content it’s been scraped from WPN so it made no difference which kind of feed I posted.

I’m with both of you in that it doesn’t matter to me as an end user which feed is used. If I like the content I’ll subscribe and I don’t mind clicking through if I have to.

The people who prefer full feeds do seem more passionate about the issue. I get the feeling that by publishing full feeds I won’t lose subscribers who prefer partial, but I would lose people who insist on full feeds if I publish only the partial.

The feeds are set to publish in full now and I’ll see over the next few weeks and months if I notice any difference.

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:20:15 +0000

I reached the conclusion that new screen scrapers were going to make RSS scraping obsolete and the protection gained from partial feeds would be short-lived at best. I keep my feeds full but think everyone should decide the role they want their RSS feeds to play in their site.

If partial feeds work best, fine, if full feeds work better, that’s fine too. It’s about the goals of the site.

Personally, I subscribe to sites that use both and don’t seem to have much preference as long as the summary is long enough for me to know what the post is about.

By: Matt Johnson

Matt Johnson — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 11:42:18 +0000

I usually post partial feeds, Like you steve i was worried about people scraping my content, But i guess we should be provideing for our visitors before trying to prevent sblogs ripping us off.