Comments on: Partial Feeds v/s Full Feeds

By: Connor Wilson

Connor Wilson — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 00:48:11 +0000

For now, I stick to full feeds. The argument, as you know, has been going on for what seems like forever, but like Lorelle said, it can never be won.

Some sites need or are bettered by one or the other, but the same thing goes for sites that use the wrong one.

By: Abhijit Nadgouda

Abhijit Nadgouda — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 05:00:29 +0000

I agree that in some cases full feeds might get too much, but that is a preference of the reader, which I think should be handled by the feed reader. I should be able to configure and tell the feed reader to show only excerpts for that feed. Of course this is in the ideal scenario.

But I have always found two factions. It will be interesting to see what the common man likes.

By: Lorelle

Lorelle — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 04:34:34 +0000

I believe than anyone who takes an absolute stance on an issue is missing the whole picture. For many blogs, full feeds work. For others, they don’t. And yet, there are people who say they will stop visiting a blog unless it has full feeds as punishment. Like how would the blogger know?

The main reason I do not consistently offer full feed content, though I do more now than I did before since WordPress added control of what appears on the feed through the MORE tag, is because many people complain that it’s “too much” to read.

I produce educational content, thus expect people to only read what interests them, not every word. Gads! I’d bore myself if I had to read every word on my blog! So I do not use full feeds on long posts so the reader has a chance to determine if this is of interest or not. If it isn’t, why should they scroll through page after page after page of content in their feed reader for something they don’t want to read? This way, it gives them a choice.

I’m with you, though, on those who use partial feeds to force statistics and page views. News agencies are the WORSE on this. I don’t want to click through to get more than the headline, so I’m now more picky than ever about what news I choose to read because it involves clicking through to a graphic heavy, slow loading, ad filled page. The news sites that are giving me one to three paragraphs are in my feed reader and the big guys who are serving only headlines are out.

By: Binny V A

Binny V A — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 04:27:26 +0000

I always prefer full feeds to partial ones. I have even unsubscribed to blogs that fails to provide a full feed. I believe that it is a mistake to disable full feeds on Freakonomics.