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Home » Parenting

Why I publish using full feeds, and sploggers, scrapers, and other thieves bedamned.

Wednesday, 24 January 2007 Comments »

Last September I blogged about Bitacle and how they were stealing people's blog content and making money from it. The "fix" I recommended was to stop publishing full-posts in your feed and just publish the first few sentences.

I was wrong, and here's why

I do all my blog reading in a feed reader. When I come to a post that only shows me the first little bit of it, I almost NEVER click over to the web site to see the rest. This means that unless your first sentence is the most compelling thing I have EVER read, I will never see what you're writing.

I figure I can't be the only one who feels this way, and I write in the public so that others will read what I write. If I didn't want anyone to read this, I'd just toil away on the longest Word document in history and save it to my hard drive.

To get readers, give them something to read

You may ask how I deal with the sites that steal my content, stick ads on it, don't give me credit or money, and get away with it? Well, I don't. I just don't worry about it. There will always be assholes out there, and there's nothing I can do about it.

And I value my readers time more than I hate sploggers.

  • Jane said:

    I publish a full feed for exactly the same reason.

    24 January 2007 at 12:17 pm
  • DD said:

    Thank you, THANK YOU! I have to admit, on a busy day and 30 new posts on my bloglines, I'll usually skip the ones that only publish the first couple of lines, for time sake.

    I know that by having a full feed the argument is that it's an extra step to comment. I don't find myself more inclined to comment on a portion-feed than a full feed. I comment when I have something to add.

    24 January 2007 at 12:23 pm
  • Robin said:

    "There will always be assholes out there, and there's nothing I can do about it."

    You are a wise, wise woman.

    24 January 2007 at 2:30 pm
  • Jonathan Bailey said:

    The decision to use full or partial feeds should never be based upon spammers and scrapers, but the role the feed plays in your site. If your site is best served by full feeds, do it. That's the end of it.

    24 January 2007 at 6:09 pm
  • Kalyn said:

    I publish full feeds for pretty much the same reason. And yes, there will always be assholes out there, but if they have google ads there *is* something you can do about it. Click on "ads by google" and you'll go through a series of windows where you can report copyright violations. Takes only abut 30 seconds, and google does seem to take it seriously.

    25 January 2007 at 12:12 pm
  • Another reason to publish full feeds instead of truncated summaries... :: Plain Jane Mom Blog. said:

    [...] In addition to caring about your readers, you can get yourself into "interesting" situations when you truncate your posts in your RSS feed. In fact, sometimes the truncation ends at the end of a sentence, and I think that I've read the whole post. Until I happen to see it on the web site at a later date. Then I'm so pleased to see the writer's finished thought. [...]

    6 February 2007 at 10:44 am
  • Going full RSS feed! said:

    [...] Like many of you I've been following the debate all over the blogosphere for years now and I've finally decided to bite the bullet and go full feed thanks to Darren's poll (75% prefer full feeds). This should be great for most of you as now you'll be able to read all the delicious GT content without having to click through to the site unless you want to! [...]

    28 September 2007 at 6:02 am

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