January 15, 2004 | View Comments (30) | Category: Web Mastering
Summary: The implications of using summaries or full context entries within RSS feeds.
Yesterday, Adam Kalsey and I had a small email conversation (is that possible?) discussing RSS feeds and this website. He suggested that I put the whole entry inside of my feed instead of just a summary. I countered that I wanted people to visit my site and therefore they get the summary instead of the full entry. His following justification for putting the entire entry intrigued me and he allowed me to post it here (as long as I don't critique his site ;) ).
They're still reading the words. There's nothing else in or around the entry that they need to see. Or even that you need them to see.
The point behind Whitespace is to get your thoughts out there and to make your name known. Not to have people see the design of the page that the text is in. The design is secondary to the text. RSS is the ultimate in minimalist design: it reduces the product to it's barest form.
- Adam Kalsey
Is it true in this day and age of newsreaders, where it is not rare to find someone with a 100 feeds to go over, that taking the time to visit a site is not important anymore? Am I really pushing people away by not including the whole entry within the feed? I always figured that users didn't mind clicking on the "read more" link (or whatever your newsreader has) and reading the entire entry within the context of the site. Maybe I have been wrong this whole time. Going on this justification then I might be better off no longer worrying about the design of a site and just posting links to the RSS feeds on the homepage (okay so that was a devil's advocate type statement).
I went to look at my stats to see what they would suggest and the numbers I found really surprised me. These are from AWStats so take that for what it's worth (page views for this month at the time of writing):
/whitespace/index.xml -----> 19377
/whitespace/index.rdf -----> 11295
/whitespace/ -----> 8370
Now when we start to dive into web statistics we know that it can be hard to decipher what the numbers actually mean so I will try my best here to analyze the data above.
Obviously, more people are viewing the xml files than the index page itself (unless each time someone hits my server checking for an update counts as a page view). The numbers for the index page could also be quite lower simply because people who use the feeds are sent to the individual entry page and not the index page. Users who happen to view the index page either come across this site from an external link or directly accessing the site by bookmark or typing the url in the address field. If I were to go on this alone I think it would make sense to include the whole entry in the feed then because it would save users the time of having to click on the link just to finish reading the entry. What I am most concerned about is keeping the community of this site though.
Does reading an entry on a site encourage the reader to post comments on the site or not? I get some great comments here on this site that have helped me continue my growth as a designer, so what happens if the comments stop coming because of the RSS feed? If you understand that, then you understand my worries.
But I am not one to shy away from an experiment for the benefit of all to learn from so from now on (for a while at least) index.xml will include the full entries (last 10 entries) and index.rdf will continue to be the summary of the entry. I admit to not being an expert with RSS feeds so things might get funky sometimes, so please bare with me.
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I like the summary version myself. But I guess it all depends on the way you use RSS feeds. My weapon of choice is the RSS Reader for Firebird. It loads into a sidebar, and the only time i see any of the description is when i mouseOver the title.
I would think that giving full content feeds would also open up the site to people who might rip off the content and pass it as their own.
I prefer the summary.
Jeremy Flint (http://www.jeremyflint.com)
I know that I prefer feeds which provide the entire entry text, rather than just an excerpt (or a summary statement, as you have done). To me, the point of reading feeds is so that I don't have to visit the site, unless I want to (such as to post a comment).
Speaking from experience, if I have a lot to do, and am skimming my feeds for something interesting to read, if I see a news item which only has the summary and I'm not totally interested in it, I probably won't go to the trouble of reading the rest of the entry. If the item does have the full content, even if I'm busy I'm more likely to read it, becuase it's already on my machine - I don't have to take any additional actions to read it.
I've thought about asking you to put full entry text in your feeds before, but I didn't because it seemed to me that your goal was to get people to your site, and admittedly supplying the full entry text does lessen your visitors to some extent.
However, if I have something to say about an entry after reading it entirely in my aggregator, I'll go to the trouble of going to the site and posting my thoughts. What might help you is to include the <comment> tag in your feeds (I know that it's in RSS 2.0, not sure about other versions) - that will be a direct link to the comments section of the entry's permalink. That's about the best that you can do to encourage people to post their thoughts when reading from their aggregator.
milbertus (http://www.milbertus.com)
One other note - I use NewsGator as my aggregator. Since it uses Outlook PST files as its storage medium, any posts that it downloads are on my disk for good, unless I delete them. This is definitely a positive feature for me, as I can then use my posts as an easy way to search for something that I know that I've read - just search through the feed folders in Outlook, and it will be there. That's harder to do when the full entry text isn't included in the feed.
And just for the record, if you go back to only including summaries, I won't unsubscribe from your feed. You always post well-thought out entries. :)
milbertus (http://www.milbertus.com)
Provide two feeds, one with summaries, one with full posts.
Let people choose what they want -- they can read the site, they can be alerted/briefed on new updates via summaries, or they can read full entries in a news reader/aggregator.
If you're concerned about comments -- since discussion is a major function of this weblog -- then provide a comments feed! That way people who consume your full content RSS feed can choose to keep abreast of conversational comments, too. Use RSS elements appropriately and your comments feed can make it easy for people to jump to a given comment, or just to the post form for the appropriate entry.
The key is that you aren't hand-rolling these RSS feeds. It doesn't cost you anything to offer multiple feeds, but it confers a real benefit to the RSS-consuming public (as small as that may yet be).
Brian (http://joechip.net/brian/)
/whitespace/ -----> 8370
So everyone else but me is using rss? heh
It's rather arrogant to say "his words are meant to be read in the context of his site design" -- not that there's anything wrong with arrogance. But it's a misplaced concern. The only time anyone's postings need to be read in the context of a design is when they explicitly refer to that design.
So, maybe half your posts. heh.
I second Brian, though FWIW I don't use a newsreader at all.
JC (http://www.thelionsweb.com/weblog)
I was struggling with this same decision myself this week. I realized that it is incorrect to assume that all RSS readers are on computers. Any handheld device application that reads feeds will not necessarily have the luxury of the ability to read the summary, then click to visit the site. This drove me to include the full posts. Thinking about it more, and application that consumes the RSS feed for other purposes, say a search engine of posts, will be far more useful to my users/readers if I include the full text of the posts. So I went with the full posts.
I understand the argument about site context, but I am not a designer, so I feel differently about the delivery platform of my content than say, Zeldman would. Finally, having said that, I visited your site after reading the summary of this post in my RSS reader:-)
Robert Occhialini (http://www.bump.net)
I've used FeedDemon since my list of must-check sites got too much to visit one by one.
I still prefer to visit sites to read the full posts (which is where FD is really good as it has a built-in browser) as it is just a much nicer experience, plus i like to check on design changes to sites.
On the summary issue, I much prefer just a couple of lines of custom-written material than the full-on post as it makes for quicker decision-making.
Of course, you're posting so much recently that I tend to just use your RSS to see if you've posted anything new and then open Mozilla to come visit your site :)
Adam (http://www.liptrot.org)
Like Brian says - offer both and let the user choose.
I don't use newsreaders anymore, I find them cumbersome and I prefer to visit the site. But that's just me. I just have blo.gs ping me via IM whenever my favorite sites are updated and I go check them out.
Keith
I third the notion of offering both summary and full entry feeds.
I favor summary feed because it's a lot easier to see if a particular topic is of interest to me if a succinct summary is present. I don't mind going to the site, in fact, I like to be reminded of the identity of those feeds I keep returning to, and I like to see the comments too. I would actually be more likely to read an entire entry by clicking from a summary than if the whole entry appears in the feed if the entry didn't happen to engross me in the first couple of lines. I guess that's what happens when you sift through a mountain of info every day.
mahalie (http://www.mahalie.com/blog/)
I used to use summaries on my blog. But my partner made me reconsider. Beyond the design issues, he got caught up in the meanings. When you syndicate something, it's not truncated. So he felt that users needed to get the whole darn thing. I agreed after realizing that when something interests me I usually open it in my browser anyway.
Then I wanted to add images to the feeds, and again he had a problem with that, simply because rss is tiny in filesize for a reason, what would be the point of it if we started adding images and styling it?.
So we came up with a solution that works pretty well, and we figure, if a reader wants to see an image then they'll come to the site.
The solution is to include a list at the bottom detailing all the images. I use the alt and title text to build the list and it works pretty well. No bandwidth hogging images, and readers know the images exist. :)
jake (http://recently.rainweb.net)
I would not be so sure that your feed is more read than your index page. Because some feed readers e.g. FeedDemon refresh every so hour depending on the user settings. So if you set every 2 hours it will request your feed every two hours, that is 12 times in a day for one perosn only. So the difference might be smaller than shown.
About the full post/summary I will opt for full post. Sometimes I'm busy with something and I'll just glance trough the post and if it is interesting I'll visit the website later to read it carefully and post a comment. Also a lot of summaries don't give a good intro to the whole entry.
Darice (http://www.darice.org)
What the hell, go back to the summaries.
(What can I say; I like to argue...)
RSS 2.0 (and Atom) provide a mechanism for including both a summary and a full feed in the same feed. Too bad readers don't support the option.
Adam Kalsey (http://kalsey.com)
This is a pretty complex issue. One of the things to look at is the redistribution of bandwidth.
That part is so complicated as to be not worth the effort to analyze. Factors such as how well readers obey HTTP headers, how often readers access the feed (whether or not it was updated), how much content is stuffed into the feed, and how many subscribers there are make it almost impossible (from my point of view).
On the issue as to the context of the site, both sides apply. Feeds do make it easier to read everything in one spot, yet you can't participate in a discussion through the feed. Also, many sites are more than just blogs, having several sections that really can't be syndicated periodically.
As far as I can tell, it depends on the website and it depends on the users. So, to bring all this chaos into one simple solution: "Provide two feeds, one with summaries, one with full posts." Good call, Brian. :)
Dris (http://dris.webhop.org/)
I plan to only provide descriptions. Why? Two reasons.
1) Semantics! RSS uses the <description> tag that people are dumping the entire post into. <description> was not meant for that. I don't know what the RDF equivalent is.
2) I'd like to encourage people joining in discussions via comments. I appreciate feedback and this will be a great opportunity.
I will also provide my full content in a seperate XML (not RSS or RDF) file, with a sample XSLT file for parsing.
David House
I use an RSS aggregator (Shrook, for Mac) that lets me choose whether I want to see the RSS item or the item's corresponding web page. (I believe NetNewsWire lets you do the same thing.) I've found that I prefer the latter, so frankly I don't know or care whether the RSS items contain summaries or the full posts. When I choose an item, I see its web page directly.
Travholt
David:
In response to your two points --
1. I personally wouldn't get that hung up on the "semantics" concern; especially since, if you're inserting full posts into an RSS 2.0 feed, you got better options than description for housing those posts.
2. Why not just offer a comments feed, if you're that concerned? I'm willing to bet the best way to grow your audience is to offer more options, not fewer. But I could be wrong :)
Brian (http://joechip.net/brian/)
Keith's right, let them choose. I find myself soo taxed for time that I really can't afford to visit every site I read... I need to know what's updated and I need to be able to click in and read the full post. So I use a feed reader, in specific FeedDemon. I have well over 100 feeds I read about twice a day.
The tool allows me to see what's updated and what is not. The feeds that are not updated I simply don't visit at that time. Vs. a bookmark where I can't determine if a site is updates so I have to visit it.
Going back to Keith's point. I think there are two kinds of users in this argument, one is the kind of user that visits the site and uses bookmarks and simular technology to maintain a list of sites. The other is a user that uses a feed reader. Why make the feed reading user go to the site? I don't know... maybe design ego?
I know many sites that use summaries in their RSS, some barely enough to see what the post is about... for those sites, I rarely visit them because of this forced user path. If they aren't going to give me the full news in the way I want to see, well, then I am just going to get it off of some other feed.
As for whitespace, I have to say it is one of the few sites I will actually click into the site to read about the topic... I guess it's because this site isn't just news, it's commentary and discussion because the posts state a view and offer up a question, much like SpeakUp does. That being said the comments are almost as valuable as the posts... so I don't know if much more than a summary is needed.. and if so, maybe it should include comment posts in the feed... is that possible? I don't know.
My 2 cents.
Nick (http://www.digital-web.com)
Sure, it's possible! One could:
-- Offer a separate comments feed, alongside full/summary content feeds.
-- Include comments directly in the full content feed. Downside: runs against the grain of many RSS readers.
-- Provide a comments 'digest' RSS feed, which would contain full contents plus all comments for each entry. This feed would need to be updated less frequently, making it more of a true digest and less useful for somebody who wanted to participate in the discussion.
Now, the first option is easy to implement and immediately useful, and the second two are more or less random ideas I wouldn't recommend to or implement for anybody. :) I'm just trying to stir the pot with regards to what somebody could do to roll comments into RSS feeds.
Brian (http://joechip.net/brian/)
I just tried adding your xml and rdf feeds to my bloglines ( http://www.bloglines.com ) newsreader.
For some reason the xml version with the whole post doesn't parse well (all the tags show). Other xml feeds display just fine.
As for excerpts over full posts, the more choice you offer your readers the better. I would prefer to read the full posts, but with so many sites to keep up to date with I tend to focus on the ones that show full content.
Jeremy Hedley's http://www.antipixel.com offers readers full post, excerpt and comment variations of his blog. A good idea.
seriocomic (http://www.seriocomic.com)
I think it's a good solution to have two (or maybe more) feeds. I don't think having full posts in RSS would really be detrimental to the discussion on the site. If people are too busy to click on the 'read more' link then there's even less chance they'd spare the time to comment.
Having a more convenient feed means Scrivs gets his message out to more people. :)
Random tangental thought: What if those blogging sites out there offered a service where your site would only be published in RSS? The site would be all content and no packaging. Hmm...
Jack (http://boxofjack.com)
If you're just going to put your whole entry in your feed, why is everyone arguing over web design all the time?
Mike (http://www.hownottofly.com)
Personally, I use Feed Demon to keep track of all of the blogs I read and to export the OPML feeds for my website.
I actually prefer reading the entries in the context of the site, rather than in the news reader. A good title, and a well-written introductory sentence/paragraph, and I can't click through fast enough.
I'd also have to say that I agree (yet again) with David House. RSS has a semantic structure. I've actually spent the last two days going over the RSS 2.0 spec and writing a RSS 2.0 Parser in JavaScript. Because many RSS feeds are not only not well-formed XML (because descriptions tend to contain p, a, and img tags), but it actually takes more time and code to parse out invalid tags and attributes. It's a pain!
However, since the RSS semantic spec has been screwed up for a while, and since many people still have the jacked-up, Internet Explorer, "let's code with document.all" mindset, then maybe a semantic RSS is a lost cause.
If this is the case, then I'd suggest offering 3: an RSS summary, an RSS full-feeds, and a semantically-valid Atom 0.3 feed (which offers the ability to contain a summary AND full-content).
It'd be something to look into at least...
Ryan Parman (http://www.skyzyx.com)
And it should be mentioned that the developers of both NetNewsWire and FeedDemon have expressed plans to add full support for Atom 0.3.
There's even an Atom 0.3 patch for the Magpie RSS Parser.
Ryan Parman (http://www.skyzyx.com)
Options are great, but I prefer well-written summaries. If the summary sounds good, I'd prefer to read it on the website. There are several reasons:
1. comments and trackbacks, which can be better than the article (great discussions here btw)
2. related information, especially "related entries" like at http://simon.incutio.com/
3. meta information, like link and acronym tooltips
4. better design
5. branding
While branding is a valid but lame reason, better design is not. Although most websites might look as good (and be as easy to read) in a newsreader, most of the ones I visit _don't_. I think people who prefer newsreaders either don't appreciate good design, or don't visit sites that have good design ;-)
re 1. You can do a comments-in-posts feed, but the feed will update everytime a new comment is posted. so the article will show as new again, even though you've read it. Given how prolific both scrivs and the commenters here are that would be hardcore. see http://joi.ito.com/ for an example (he was playing with CSS in RSS at one stage)
oli (http://oli.boblet.net/)
Oli: if you give comments their own feed, you don't have the problem Joi did.
Brian (http://joechip.net/brian/)
Whatever you choose to do, you should make sure your RSS feed is not busted. (That was a hint that whitespace's RSS feed is busted with NetNewsWire at least.)
Andrei Herasimchuk (http://www.desingbyfire.com)
Anyone care to send me a template for their full entry RSS feeds so that I can get mine to not look like they were spewed out by an angry, drunk computer. Would greatly appreciate it.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
New comments feed at http://9rules.com/whitespace/comments.xml for everyone to check out.
Scrivs (http://www.9rules.com/whitespace/)
Keep track of comments to all entries with the Comments Feed
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#1
I can see both sides of the argument - Jeffrey Zeldman was eloquent in his defence of summary feeds over full posts, suggesting, if I remember, that his words are meant to be read in the context of his site design, and can be better understood in that context. A fair point, but as a reader of weblogs, I prefer to do as much reading as possible in my aggregator - it's fast, there are no visual distractions - making it incredibly frustrating to have to switch to the browser when my eye is caught by an incomplete post.
Whitespace at least provides a pithy summary of content - I can no longer bear to read any weblogs who provide feeds that simply cut off the opening sentence of a post at an arbitrary point - and those summaries are always sufficiently tempting to make switching applications fairly painless. The commenting point is a good one, though - I never would have left this one (whatever it's value may be!) had you been providing full posts in your feeds.
So, for me at least, full posts are preferred, summaries are fine, trailing sentences make my blood boil.
Jack (http://www.submitresponse.co.uk)