Comments Feed Now Available
April 05, 2004 15 | Comments (Closed)
Due to popular demand (well maybe not that popular, but Andrei asked for it and he’s got a bit of pull with me) I’ve added a comments feed.
This is somewhat new territory for me as I’ve never subscribed to one before and I’m not 100% sure how they are supposed to work. I leave it up to my users/readers to let me know if I’m doing it right.
I’ve already found it very useful myself in keeping up with the spammers. For some reason I’ve had a bit of a resurgence there. It will also help me in determining when a post’s discussion has degenerated into too much noise. I’ve got a few of those, mainly on off-topic types of posts.
I need to go back and close some of them.
In any-case, I hope some of you find it useful. Let me know if you have any problems with it or if you’ve got any suggestions for me.
Filed under: My Sites
Comments
1. MaThIbUs said:
To quote Jeffrey Zeldman:
I completely agree with this, and personally I don’t use any feed at the moment. Maybe some day I will, but for now I don’t see the point.
Of course it won’t harm offering a feed on your site :)
Posted on April 5, 2004 11:56 AM | #
2. Keith said:
It’s a bit off-topic for this comments feed, but I read basically the same way as you do, MaThIbUs. I like to go to the site.
Thing is, many, many other folks just want the feed. It’s my feeling that if you are publishing content on a regular basis it’s in your best interests to make feeds available to those who want them.
Posted on April 5, 2004 12:20 PM | #
3. Ste Grainer said:
(Off-topic response to the first comment) To me, an RSS feed isn’t as much like storing groceries on the sidewalk as it is like a menu posted in a restaurant window. It lets me know what sort of food they offer (in particular the daily specials) so I can make an informed decision about whether to stop in for a bite. :)
(On-topic response to the “meat” of the post) What a great idea. I’ve been wondering how one might set up an overall comments feed in MovableType. After you’ve had some other user feedback, would you care to share your template (or at least your thoughts about how such a template would be best constructed)?
Posted on April 5, 2004 12:21 PM | #
4. Adam said:
I think that quote would probably be more meaningful if Zeldman didn’t currently offer an RSS feed, which of course he does.
But, wow, Keith. 200+ comments from teeny-boppers on a web developer’s personal blog? That’s hilarious. Now I see why you serve ads. You’re a frickin’ message board :) At least they’re reading!
Posted on April 5, 2004 12:27 PM | #
5. Gwen said:
In general, comments feeds are annoying, because they offer a lot of yeah, yeah, me, too-type feedback, but, to be fair, most of the ones I’ve come across are on personal blogs. I can see the value of having one on a site like yours, where the comments section tends to evolve into a lively, on-topic discussion, but I wouldn’t subscribe with your current format, where each new comment shows up as a new article; it gives up any context, and makes it difficult to follow.
e.g. entry in reader from your comments feed:
Veerle Pieters comments on “Web Design is Web Design”
I’m with Jeremy Flint (#12) on this one (snip)
I have no clue what Jeremy Flint said, or what the original article (which I probably read, but I read a lot of things) is about. The entirety of the value of RSS for me is the convenience factor, being able to keep up without making more work for myself.
I really like the comment feed format Jennifer at etc. offers as an MT template – an excerpt of the article, with comments included.
Posted on April 5, 2004 12:33 PM | #
6. Keith said:
Ste – No problem, of course I’ll share.
Adam – Isn’t that hilarious? I’ve got others that are similar. It’s one of the reasons why I offer a “No Play” RSS feed, so that the geeks don’t have to wade through that stuff. I kind of like the off-topic posts on sites though. All work and no play and all that….
Posted on April 5, 2004 12:38 PM | #
7. DarkBlue said:
Personally I’d prefer email notifications (of the first new comment in a given thread, since my last visit to that thread).
RSS comments - surely that’s going to mean a lot of unnecessary bandwidth consumption as your user’s aggregators periodically poll the file?
Posted on April 5, 2004 12:51 PM | #
8. Keith said:
Gwen – I’ll look into that other template.
DarkBlue – I’ve not been able to get e-mail notifications to work. It’s something I’ve been meaning to take up with my host. As far as bandwidth, I don’t think that is much of a concern here, but we’ll see.
Posted on April 5, 2004 01:00 PM | #
9. Scrivs said:
200+ comments is insane. Envy++
Posted on April 5, 2004 01:00 PM | #
10. Andrei Herasimchuk said:
Love it.
The main reason I use a comments feed has only to do with tracking. Comments get lost in most web site designs, and I have yet to see any good model to give people a way to know when anything has been added to any discussion. Even on my own site, I find my approach non-optimal.
So, I’m glad to see you added it. Now I can read all the useful thing I probably missed by just scanning your home page.
(I’m using NetNewsWirse for all my RSS, so I’m not sure where people got 200+ comments from… all I got was 15.)
Posted on April 5, 2004 01:19 PM | #
11. waylman said:
Wordpress offers comment feeds by default. To see how others do them, you could always download their rather small package and check it out.
Personaly, I don’t use them. As it is, I only use the summary feeds to check what sites have been updated and then go to the site to read the post.
Interestingly, Wordpress’s implementation shows all feeds as always modified, which does me no good. Fortunetly, a quick look at the code shows some commented out code that solves the problem.
Posted on April 5, 2004 01:22 PM | #
12. Gwen said:
I meant that her format (article excerpt and comments as one RSS article) make it much easier to follow. It also negates the necessity of subscribing to both feeds if you want to, say, keep up on the comments and the articles. I’m not sure if this is better or worse for rebuild times and bandwidth usage.
I’ve been playing around with a comments feed for my personal blog that puts newest comments above the article (and above the fold in my reader) in reverse chron order. I’m still not happy with it, but, again, I don’t really see the point of a comments feed in that milieu.
p.s. there’s a subscribe to comments plugin available.
Posted on April 5, 2004 01:31 PM | #
13. owen said:
comment feed hmmm…probably a new comment feed over all posts would be more useful in my case.
on that whole comment noise issue. I usually get like 2 or maybe 3 comments. But recently alot of traffic from google has lead a lot of people to a particular page. I’ve thought of forcing people to include a email address. that didn’t affect it much, so now I’m putting a maximum limit on the allowed comments (150).
Posted on April 6, 2004 08:57 AM | #
14. Andrew said:
I just use my comments feed so I can know when I get a comment I can reply to. There’s a link image on my sidebar for it, but I don’t know if anybody really uses it. They’re good if a certain topic turns into a discussion that lasts for a while, though, especially, since WP (i don’t know about MT, since I’ve never used it) allows you to have a feed for each post’s comments (using in-URI variables).
(It also helps that I’m notified almost immediately when I get a spam comment. My blog was up for less than a week before I got one.)
Posted on April 6, 2004 09:28 AM | #
15. elie said:
and how have u done to be immediatly notified when you get a spam?
i would like to do the same on my blog
Posted on April 28, 2004 06:13 AM | #
Comments are now closed