Thursday, March 22, 2007

Feeding the beast

Question for those of you who read this blog via an RSS Reader or similar program: do you have a preference about whether the site feed publishes each post in its entirety or just the beginning? Given some recent issues with spoiler protection -- and with the spoiler-riffic "Galactica" finale coming up on Sunday -- I'm toying with switching to the partial feed option, but only if there aren't a lot of objections.

32 comments:

Anonymous said...

I much prefer the entire post option, but if you change it I probably wouldn't mind.

On my RSS reader, I usually have to scroll down to read the spoilery part. So I'm never actually spoiled when reading your site.

Unknown said...

I much prefer the whole post option.

Anonymous said...

I read every single feed. One of the (admittedly) reasons I like your blog so much is that you provide the entire thing in the feed. I really love that you do so. In fact, I recently had to cut down on the number of blogs I was reading and not one them that provided the full post/blog in the feed made the cut. Having the whole blog in the feed saves me a lot of time and is far more enjoyable for me. Thanks!

Anonymous said...

The full feed, most definitely. As an earlier poster said, you always provide enough lead-in before launching into spoilers that it's unlikely any of us will read them by accident.

Thank you for asking!
--Sean T. Collins
http://www.alltooflat.com/about/personal/sean

Anonymous said...

I'd prefer not to know that Lee is a Cylon. WHOOPS!

Anonymous said...

Me too, I hate hate hate partial feeds. It sounds like that's the emerging consensus, but if you must go the partial route, do you have the option to maintain both feeds and let the readers choose?

Anonymous said...

Whole feed, please. You do a great job of posting a "spoiler alert." I can't stress enough how nice it is that you don't do partial feeds.

lnewcomer said...

I prefer the full feed. I've come to enjoy your posts a great deal, but I find that on sites that don't post the full feed, I don't read nearly as many posts.

Texas Single Girl said...

I also prefer the full feed; I just look at the title of the post/first few sentences to see if I've watched the show or not.

Jenn said...

I really prefer the full feed, as well.

Anonymous said...

Full feed please. For me, the image comes across and I usually know better than to read the whole post on Tuesday if I managed to miss Heroes on Monday night :)

Anonymous said...

I prefer a partial feed, but as long as you have a spoiler alert and all spoilers are in plain text in the body of the post, I don't mind so much. I can look at the headline or picture saying it's about Galactica, and skip past it.

Two weeks ago Aint It Cool News ran an interview with Katee Sackhoff with no spoiler warnings in the RSS feed, where the first line in 14 point bold type was "As far as I know, my character is dead for good." That really annoyed me.

Anonymous said...

You know, boffo, for someone who was really annoyed at being spoiled by that AICN article, I find it maddeningly ironic that you just so casually passed that spoiler on to those of us reading comments on a post partially inspired by a desire to protect us from BSG spoilers. Thanks a frakkin' lot.

Alan Sepinwall said...

Jim's joking around. That's not a spoiler.

Anonymous said...

I wasn't referring to Jim's obvious joke. I was talking about boffo's post re: Katee Sackhoff.

Alan Sepinwall said...

Sorry, missed that one. I have no comment on it, one way or the other.

Lisa said...

I prefer the whole post -- I don't even click on your feed if it's Monday and I'm not caught up on BSG. But either way works for me. I usually click over to the actual blog cause I like reading the comments.

Anonymous said...

I love the whole feed! Spoilers be darned. I wish all the blogs I read had the full post like that. It is awesome.

I also adore the lack of word verification on the comments. Huzzah.

R.A. Porter said...

I like the full feed too, but see that you've got a meter on your site. If you went with partials (although consensus prefers the full) you'd have a better idea how many people are reading you. That's a more selfish reason, though.

Anonymous said...

Full feeds are the best!

Unrelated, have you watched MEDIUM? I find the relationship between the adult couple on that show rivals the one on FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS for quality and realism.

Anonymous said...

I also strongly prefer the full post feed. I'll avoid the blog in my reader when I have yet to watch a spoiler-likely show on DVR-delay, like BSG or Lost.

Unknown said...

Keep on keepin' on with the full feed.

Anonymous said...

"Jim's joking around. That's not a spoiler."

WINK!

Anonymous said...

Because of what you write about, the partial feed option is best. I use RSS to let me know when you have updated, and sometimes I read the post in RSS, others when I go to the site. Because of the nature of your commentary and prose, I wouldn't want anyone inadvertently being spoiled because of an RSS issue.

Anonymous said...

I prefer the whole feed. As long as you don't put spoilers in the title, I can delete the entry without reading it. I did get pissed at some other columnists (not you) who spoiled a big death on Veronica Mars by putting it in the title which didn't give me any chance to delete the entry.

Anonymous said...

don't change your feed. i read your blog through bloglines and i much prefer the entire feed Alan!

love your blog BTW! :)

Anonymous said...

I'm definitely on the side of full feed. In fact, since I've switched over to Google Reader, I find myself not clicking through to the pages that don't have a full feed. It's one of the reasons I don't read Clicked on MSNBC anymore.

Spoilers are easy enough to scroll past, or in Google, collapse the thread so only the title is visible.

Anonymous said...

I prefer the whole post option. And I usually know by your intro sentence whether to stay away or not if it's an episode I haven't watched yet.

Anonymous said...

I don't understand why someone would read a post if they haven't watched the episode that it pertains to yet.

I prefer the full feed.

and I am not amused by Jim's ruse.

That is, if I watched BSG.

Anonymous said...

I prefer partial. The conclusion to the Dean's murder was spoiled when I checked the RSS feed.

Skytalon said...

I prefer whole post.

Anonymous said...

Whole post is fine, but the titles count too..."It's my dad in a box" is a spoiler once you're actually watching that episode.

I tend to think it's my own fault if I accidentally click your blog before I've read something, but that one showed up in the feed summary. Ouch.