Is it me or are some posts not making it into the RSS feeds?
I consistently see @doctorow posts via Twitter that never show up in my feed reader.
Ā
3 Likes
Are you sure theyāre not in the feed, versus formatted in some way your reader hates?
1 Like
No, I havenāt double checked yet but since Iām using one of the popular Google reader replacements, that would still be a lot of users.
Iām mobile right now and your mobile page has no direct links to the feed so I havenāt checked.
@doctorowās feed entries, for at least a year, have only been partial entries (āread moreā type links), which Iāve complained about to no end before. Must be an author setting because it doesnāt affect all site authors.
1 Like
I use https://bazqux.com for reading.
Ok. False alarm. Iām now seeing them as āreadā in my feed so I must have fat-fingered it.
His entries being truncated is still an issue though:
Doesnāt happen to Rob and Mark, for example, or guest authors. Just Cory (that Iāve noticed).
Xeniās feed items are also partial.
Partial feed items are up to individual Boingers. Iām interested, though, if there are missing items altogether.
1 Like
I havenāt done an exhaustive look. It just seemed that way. Perhaps the almost non-entry feed items were just scanned over by my eyes.
Is there some rationale for why some authors would only offer partial items and some donāt? The inconsistency is really annoying for anyone who uses a feed reader. Is this about monetization?
Ok - if you do see missing posts, let me know and Iāll investigate.
Sorry, Iām the wrong person to answer any of that. 
1 Like
Canāt speak to why individual boingers do it. But the point of the āmoreā link is to get people to visit the site itself, not just read the article in their RSS reader and then vanish.
Monetisation is part of it (most folks donāt serve ads inside their RSS feed, although Iāve begun to see a few sites starting to do this over the past year or so), general SEO-style site stickiness (ārelated articlesā, āyou might also likeā¦ā, etc) is part of it, sometimes you want to do something fancy that RSS readers typically donāt support (special javascript to give a particular effect; in some of my blogs I want to show image comparisons, and thatās much easier to do with a javascript image slider, for example). In any of those cases, you use the āmoreā link to push people into a true web browser so they can see the intended content, the way it was intended to be seen.
Speaking of RSS readers not supporting javascript, probably the #1 reason to insert a āclick here to get the full articleā link is that Google Analaytics mostly doesnāt work to track usersā behaviours around RSS. Iāve used āMoreā links in the past just to figure out how many people were actually reading my articles, to help figure out which topics were popular and which werenāt, amongst the folks who have subscribed to my stuff via RSS.
I donāt see ads here eitherā¦ Ad networks are the primary source of browser malware.
And notably, the primary source of revenue for the site you choose to frequent, too!
This is regrettable. I do hope folks find a business model which doesnāt involve this sort of guilt-tripping of people into engaging in dangerous practices. I imagine that must be a very uncomfortable ethical dilemma to live under. (But I totally understand needing to eat!)
But letās face facts; browsing the web without an ad blocker is demonstrably dangerous both to you and to the people around you (or at least on the same LAN with you, who can be infected by second-hop malware once it has first established itself on your weaker system). Itās no different from profiting by getting people not to vaccinate their kids, or profiting from getting people to drive without seatbelts. That itās your primary source of revenue doesnāt make it ethical to demand people engage in the dangerous behaviours you profit from.
I hope that BoingBoing finds a different way to make money. One which I can ethically support and can safely contribute toward. Just donāt ask me not to vaccinate my kids. Or not to fasten my seatbelt. Or to browse the web without an adblocker.
2 Likes
Fortunately, Iāve bought stuff in the store instead. That is why we have those āfakeā posts advertising items in the store constantly, right: to make BoingBoing money? or do Mark and Xeni (for example) really think we need that many vaporizers?
Iām not your eyeballs though. I refuse online advertising. If yāall wanna take up real estate on a page with potential malware, feel free. Iām not looking at it though. I do browser security for a living for Mozilla. I know exactly what kind of shit the ad networks serve up and Iām not participating (and it isnāt an exaggeration either).
Even better, set up a $5 or $10 a month subscription and turn off the ads for people. Thatās what the New York Times did and I pay them. At least give us the option to have an ad-free BoingBoing.
1 Like
Yay! Iām not involved in business stuff but Iām sure that was more revenue than your eyeballs would be worth, and moreso, that the boingers would much rather fund the site that way. So again, yay!
Theyāre not fake! BB store posts happen in partnership with StackSocial. Author posts are actually stuff they use and recommend themselves. Yes, Mark has a lot of stuff.
Iām sure if it made sense for us to do that, the Boingers will go that direction. Weāre not the NY Times, and the economies of scale donāt work that way.
Jason has spent literally decades in the online properties business (including as my boss at FM for no small part of that). He (and the other Boingers) would sincerely like nothing more than being free of online ads. Until then, we do the best we can. We squash bad ads when we hear about them, reject bad ads to the greatest extent we can, and the Authors otherwise try to make this place as awesome as possible.
Again, thank you for supporting our work.
1 Like
Thankfully we have other ways to generate revenue, theyāre just not nearly as lucrative. Buy a shirt! Buy the stuff the Authors recommend! We get helped out in return, and appreciate it.
So we got to justify our adblocker usage here or something now? 
If I turn my Adblocker off will you stop the BB Store posts, which seem to be US only? I donāt mind the Amazon cut, but itās not like I get much from there anyway.
Yeah, nah. OK for you to spruik that, but ten bucks is a lot less for you than it is for me. Would you pay, In dunno, $150 a month for it?
Oh, believe me Iāve lamented that fact on more than one occasion when I missed a good deal because apparently Toronto, while south of Seattle, might as well be in Siberia as far as the store is concerned. 
3 Likes
