The Great Blaugust RSS Feed Debate
Once again, I have stumbled across an interesting debate that has provided me with an opportunity to write a blog post. Over on the Blaugust Discord Server, I read a comment from AgingGamer regarding RSS feeds and their significance with regard to blogging. This in turn referred me to a post by fyr(don’t you love all these nom de plumes) who wrote at depth about the ongoing community debate about the use of RSS/Atom feeds. The article explored the importance of such feeds with regard to reaching readers and providing accessibility to the disabled. All of which provided me with a great deal of food for thought. Mainly because I use a mainstream website service provider for my online endeavours, so RSS is by default built. I’ve never really considered not having such a facility at my disposal. But the rise in the IndieWeb scene challenges this assumption.
Apparently some bloggers do not like RSS/Atom feeds. That is not to say they are not inherently anti-RSS. The objections seem to be over XML feeds being limited in what information and functionality that they can provide. From a technical perspective many prefer HTML-based h-feed/h-entry microformats as a more elegant alternative. RSS just duplicates information that already exists on the website. Feeds can break and accumulate a surprising amount of interoperability baggage. Another argument is that RSS is relatively poor at representing social interaction. Feeds are good for providing notifications of new posts but not much else, such as comments or likes. There is also no support for responding to a post via your own site. Hence this discussion seems to be more about RSS-reader culture rather than RSS itself.
However, from my perspective as an old school blogger, there are some cultural differences that also shape this ongoing discussion. As with last years discussion about blog comments, there seems to be a generational shift in the way we prefer to interact with websites and blogs. I appreciate that those who hail from the IndieWeb scene often come from an IT professional background, so a key motivation is technical efficiency. There is also another group of bloggers who I shall politely describe as wishing to conduct their online interactions with others, very much on their own terms. Both groups appear to advocate the ability to read other peoples content, interact with it and even repost it without directly going anywhere near the source content. A means to observe and partake in a sort of measured form of social exchange. Possibly where the other party may not always be aware of the interaction in question.
Ultimately, you run your blog how you wish and use RSS/Atom feeds to suit your needs. If you wish to utilise some other system that’s fine. I personally like the RSS feed for my blog and it is set up the way it is on purpose. It shows the blogpost title and the first paragraph. It exists to bring traffic to my site. If you simply read the entire post via a reader, then you will possibly miss the “related posts” links at the bottom of each article. Traffic begets further traffic, or that is at least the theory. It is a minor point but often the images I use to compliment a blog post have been specifically chosen to have relevance to the thrust of the article. I may also have added a humorous caption that has a bearing on the matter or exists to lighten the tone if that is required. One of the keys aspects of blogging that is important to me is building a readership. Hence I see not only my posts but the entirety of my blog as part of an overall quid pro quo. I’ve created something potentially of interest. Please visit the site to read it.
I can see the allure of a philosophy of traversing the internet on your own terms. However, there is just a hint of cakeism about this approach. It may come at the expense of the social and community dimension of blogging. Some bloggers may see a reduction in blog traffic and direct interaction and think “Sod it. What’s the point”. AI summaries are already having a similar impact. Overall, I don’t think there is a definite answer to this debate. It’s a question of perspective and what you individually want from your online experience. Do you want to be able to access everything from a single point of presence and minimise all possible inconvenience. Is there a need to consider anything beyond that, such as the what the content creators may want in return for their output and the work they’ve put into it? The phrase “horses for courses” comes to mind as well as “things change”. Certainly this is an area of blog culture evolution to keep an eye on.
