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Penny Arcade RSS Feed
Gordo
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Comic: Gordo complains about the Penny Arcade RSS Feed
There did you like it? What? You couldn't see it? That's odd. Maybe I hate for my fans to read my comics in a way that is convenient to them and have put it behind a horrible title only feed. I mean could you....
Wait? Why did the text just cut off? So the news post about my awesome comic about Penny Arcade is cut off too. Wow. I really hate my fans. I mean sure, a full RSS feed would probably increase my page views since it would encourage people to read the comic and pass it to their friends but I don't care about that. Yeah, a full RSS feed makes viewing my comics and news posts so much easier, especially if viewed on a cell phone, but I have to completely control how people view my comic. It's mine. So good, that settles it. No full RSS feed.
I hope you enjoy the comic I posted above. Well, if you can figure out how to view it.
There did you like it? What? You couldn't see it? That's odd. Maybe I hate for my fans to read my comics in a way that is convenient to them and have put it behind a horrible title only feed. I mean could you....
Wait? Why did the text just cut off? So the news post about my awesome comic about Penny Arcade is cut off too. Wow. I really hate my fans. I mean sure, a full RSS feed would probably increase my page views since it would encourage people to read the comic and pass it to their friends but I don't care about that. Yeah, a full RSS feed makes viewing my comics and news posts so much easier, especially if viewed on a cell phone, but I have to completely control how people view my comic. It's mine. So good, that settles it. No full RSS feed.
I hope you enjoy the comic I posted above. Well, if you can figure out how to view it.
Gordo on
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Posts
Incoherent? Check!
Wrong place for posting? Check!
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
I've never had an issue sharing it with friends either - not that "hey did you see today's Penny Arcade?" requires a lot of fancy software.
Yup.
I agree with this post. Minus the sarcasm because we're nice to fellow members in Tube's circus.
After looking at the different specifications, I decided on RSS as it accomplished more of what I was looking to do. Specifically, RSS was meant to alert people of updates to content. It is important to note that RSS was not to replace the delivery of the content itself. After some thought, I decided to not include HTML in the RSS feed because the RSS specification does not allow for embedding HTML and most readers at the time did not support HTML parsing. Several semi-official hacks have been developed to work around this problem, but at the end of the day they are still hacks.
Not including full text in the news feed was a similar decision. I have a field in our database called "excerpt" which stores a short summary or introductory paragraph. When left blank, the field defaults to the first X words. I suppose I should change that to default to the first paragraph. I'll put that on my TODO list for the software that generates those feeds.
I'll unlock the thread, and people are welcome to post suggestions for the RSS feed.
And Gordo, don't be a dick.
Personally I unsubscribe to any feed that doesn't provide full posts. I understand that views from feeds don't provide ad impressions, though, and don't drive traffic to the site.
This alone should make it very clear why the system is as it is, I'm guessing. I obviously don't have their revenue figures, but my assumption is that ad revenue is probably generating more income than the store. In any event, it is generating SOME income, and RSSing everything would probably harm that. This is not a bad thing, I think.
Gordo may want to read some psych articles about the usefulness of opening up a request by putting the other side on the defensive.
PSN: TheScrublet
This explains why the initial decision was made.
However, why is it still the case? I mean, I read the news from the main page and the comic from the SE++ post anyways, but I can understand the argument. Or would that require like, a super-thousand years of coding?
Also, is there any way to get a separate Comic and News feed, with one Combined? That way, if I don't care about newsfeeds I don't get them or get the RSS reader telling me I've got unread crap when I just want to see the comics. This actually would probably be a bigger deal if the comics and full news could load now...
"Man I just wanted to read the comic and news post, not be BOMBARDED BY YOUR ADVERTISING SCREW YOU GUYS"
That's a fair point, but you'd get exactly the same amount of ads as when you go to the website.
Plus, nobody's forcing you to use the feed.
Would it be possible to split into two feeds, one for comic-one for news?
You don't see Flash ads if you turn off plugins either. Moot point.
The fact that some percentage of HTTP/HTML consumers may not be seeing Flash ads currently does not cancel out the fact that 100% of XML Syndication consumers would not see Flash ads.
Yeah, allright. But when you see the main site without Flash, you get image ads instead. Couldn't those be put in the feed?
I think there might be Flash ads in Slashdot's feed these days, courtesy of Google. They may just be GIFs, of course, as I've never found out for certain.