Have an RSS/Atom feed of the Reading List

[azurite]

Title:
Have an RSS/Atom feed of the Reading List

Area:
entries, rss

Summary:
Have an RSS/Atom feed of one's entire Reading List, including protected entries

Description:
I have yet to find a robust journaling site that has all the great features of friends and communities that also supports a singular RSS/Atom feed of the friends list/reading page. This would help users that want to view a "quick summary" of their reading page and only view the entries that are of interest to them at the moment, without necessarily looking at the whole list of full entries in a browser window.

Rather than having to friend a multitude of journals and communities in order to try and read entries (and not even protected ones, at that), have an RSS/Atom feed of one's entire friends' list, with a secure way for people to see protected entries in their reader of choice. (As an aside, using cookies supposedly doesn't work with most RSS readers, but NetNewsWire, the reader I use, does have an option for entering in a User ID and password and saving that in order to see protected entries.)

I have seen this done through convoluted hacks like styles and such on LiveJournal, but for me, it stopped working a little less than a month ago, with no explanation. If this kind of thing were officially supported, it would be wonderful!

Poll #740

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 46

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
32 (69.6%)

Should be implemented with changes.
8 (17.4%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
5 (10.9%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.2%)

Comments

[mark]

FWIW, I am very against this idea. I don't want my content showing up in someone else's feed.

And as soon as you allow people to opt out, the feed becomes nearly useless. The person reading the feed still has to click back to Dreamwidth, so they might as well just start there to begin with.

(This isn't to say it won't get implemented, I'm just providing my particular feedback on it.)

[azurite]

I guess it depends on the type of content. When I post here or to LJ, the security settings I choose alter who can read it. So if I say "I don't want my protected entries showing up in feeds," then someone who subscribes to my LJ/DW won't see them, even if they're "logged in." Alternatively, I could have special filters so that only entries of X type go into the feed, nothing else. That way, I know exactly what content can and does go into feeds.

I'm also thinking of communities and other journals where people aren't concerned about the content being circulated as RSS. The whole point of RSS is to let people know when something's been updated, and I've found it a LOT easier than reading a whole huge Reading/Friends Page. The RSS puts everything into tidy summaries with names and dates, rather than whole entries, 20 (or so) at a time. That way, I can only read what I want, when I want.

[thorfinn]

Hrm. I don't really see a difference between an authenticated RSS feed and an authenticated webpage. If the viewer is authenticated, then there is no difference.

Yes, there's an aspect where an RSS feed is more convenient and less obviously authenticated/secure, but in these days of web browser password saving and similar things, there's very little practical difference.

There's little to no point having an RSS feed of my own journal - I want to read other people's.

[squirrelitude]

All I really care about is finding out that someone has posted, and roughly what it is about. I'd be happy to have your posts show up as titles with a link in the body, and other folks' posts show up in full.