Add interest keywords to feed accounts

[ninetydegrees]

Title:
Add interest keywords to feed accounts

Area:
feeds

Summary:
It's been suggested to make feeds searchable, which is a very good idea. However, I'd also like to be able to use interests to search for them because I think it would be more helpful when you want to find feeds pertaining to a certain topic.

Edit: see this comment for an alternative suggestion which doesn't use interest keywords.

Description:
I have no idea how many feed accounts they are on the site or how many are created per day so, to be honest, I don't know if this is a nice idea or a crazy one and how to implement it. Ideas and discussions are really welcome.

First, who would be able to add interests? Any user? A dedicated team of volunteers? Should users only be able to add interests from a pre-approved list? Could new ones be suggested? How?

Should the interests remain general (e.g. news, comics, music, science, technology, food,...) to be more manageable or would that would make the feature less useful/too restrictive?

What about personal blogs? I can see the potential for drama there. OTOH, it'd be like letting people assign interests to one's profile. OTOH, Neil Gaiman's blog is the feed with the greatest number of subscribers on DW so if we leave these out how useful is the feature?

Anything else?

Poll #6451 Add interest keywords to feed accounts

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 41

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
9 (22.0%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
5 (12.2%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
3 (7.3%)

(I have no opinion)
21 (51.2%)

(Other: please comment)
3 (7.3%)

Comments

[matgb]

You don't want the web address, you want the feed address. look for the feed icon in your browser taskbar on the site (not knowing what version of which browser I can't be more specific, on firefox 3.6 it's on the top right of the address).

That gives the feed address of http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ggmain.rss

Try that ;-)

[frith]

I'm using Firefox 3.5.5. I do have a feed icon in the location bar when I go to http://www.girlgeniusonline.com and when I click on it, it opens up a page with the feed address you cited. Something similar happens on Equestria Daily. I'm learning.

And yet, searching DW for http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/ggmain.rss is giving a null result. Not even blogs this time. I must be using the wrong search fields. The site map appears to only have the search fields I've already tried. The Feed Accounts page does not seem to include a dedicated search feature. Google only gives me 2 results for the url +dreamwidth: one Livejournal result and one Insanejournal result.

[matgb]

http://www.dreamwidth.org/feeds/

Add feed by URL.

If you're willing to play around with about:config in firefox you can automate it, there was a howto posted in, IIRC, dw_nifty but it wasn't one of mine.

[frith]

Aha! Thanks! See my reply to azurelunatic below. Next time I come across a post stating 'I can't find feed X' I'll try that as well. 8^)

[azurelunatic]

The interface where one adds feeds doubles as a search, for the exact feed and not a variant. It's poorly documented, and also inherited behavior.

[frith]

Ah, that makes sense as a means to reduce duplication of feeds. 8^) As I didn't want to create a new feed I didn't try that, just in case I wouldn't be able to cancel in mid process. As you say, that only works for exact matches, not variants. Thus it can be useful in finding feeds poorly named by the original subscriber, but being able to list all the feeds in 1000 item batches would be very useful in finding all the variants of a feed in most cases.

[matgb]

I wouldn't worry about that though (it might be good to sort feeds by source urL though, hmmm). if duplicate feeds are created (is someone uses the RSS, someone else uses the ATOM), then Support usually merge them together. You don't lose much from having dupe feeds given the vast number of feeds the system is set up to handle.

[frith]

There are pros and cons, and neutral, for duplicate feeds.

Pro: some feeds may include the content of the feed, while others merely link to the source. With Girl Genius I prefer the latter. It reminds me to go read the comic once a month. If there was only one feed and it posted the latest page three times a week, I would be dissatisfied.

Con: having all subscribers on the same feed help grade the popularity of the source. It also facilitates discussion in the feed comments, albeit temporary. It could serve as another avenue for networking reading lists via common tastes.

Neutral: the system can handle a vast number of feeds (your statement), no harm, no foul.