Aggregators as Couches, Comments as Salons
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Another limitation of RSS readers I’ve often griped about before: with a few exceptions (Bloglines for one), they exclude comment threads from the feed. This sends entirely the wrong message: that the posts are the main thing, and the writer of the blog is the expert.
I operate on the opposite assumption: I post my thoughts or questions, and expect the comments to lead to better and new understandings – and that’s what often happens. RSS readers miss all of that.
So just for the record, though I haven’t written a new post in four days, I’ve been busy reading and replying to the conversations in three recent posts – A Sunday Science Sermon (68 comments about what “knowing” means), Muhammad Ali: D- Student? Or F- School? (90 comments about whether schools sabotage the futures of smart non-writerly communicators), and For the Roses: My Latest Position on Classroom Blogging (45 comments on whether non-homework blogs should be pushed on all or pulled for the few).
I say this simply to invite those who never leave their readers to take a stroll into planet comment, where the real learning – dialogical, challenging, mutually sharpening – takes place. It’s a fairly new development on this blog, this type of discussion, and I’m enjoying it immensely.
I’m dealing this week with all sorts of trips to embassies and immigration offices (the legal hangover of the marriage party), so no new posts. But you can catch me and many smart, engaged people in the comments.
Come on – don’t be an RSS potato. Get out and mix a bit.
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Clay –
I agree with you totally! I find so often that my posts become just a part of the larger conversation (not quite as large as yours, though!) and sometimes want to shove the comments into a new post just to show people in readers what they’re missing. I do the majority of my blog reading on actual blogs, sometimes finding the posts from twitter or Google Reader, but then traveling to the post to see what everyone ELSE said.
Kate Olsons last blog post..An Offering (while I dig out)
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Kate Olson
8 May 08 at 11:09 am
I subscribe to the feeds for comments on my blogs through Netvibes, get to follow the discussions right there in my aggregator, it’s great!
Jason Welkers last blog post..AP Economics exam review materials ready for download…
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Jason Welker
8 May 08 at 11:22 am
Thanks for the post Clay – reading only through RSS is like reading half the story at times – especially when there are many comments.
Being new to web2 and reading posts, a lot of my enjoyment and learning comes from the added information / banter I come across in the comments. Posts can be a conversation but you can’t do that in a reader.
Like Jason, I subscribe to comments but I also click out of the reader to enter the writer’s real blog where I read archives as well. So if you’re a blogger and wonder why people comment on old posts, that might be a reason.
Grace Kats last blog post..Scientific Investigation – Which Battery Lasts Longest?
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Grace Kat
8 May 08 at 4:27 pm
Agreed that RSS should do a better job with comments.
I found a plugin that embeds the comments to your RSS feed, though (there’s a bit of a lag-time, but it’s better than nothing). And I’ve been trying to promote it as much as possible, because I think it’s really useful.
You can see it in action on my blog’s feed at http://feeds.feedburner.com/derrickkwa/suigeneris (you’ll have to scroll down a couple of posts, because my latest ones don’t have any comments).
The plugin came from http://www.i-jeriko.de/wordpress-plugin-feed-with-comments/ but the page doesn’t seem to be up anymore. At least, I can’t access the page. So if you (or any of your readers) want, you can drop me an email, and I’ll send you the php file of the plugin.
Derrick Kwas last blog post..Social Media Breakfast Singapore 2
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Derrick Kwa
8 May 08 at 10:48 pm
@Derrick, What an EXCELLENT offer. Checked out your feed and am very keen to try the plugin. (Congrats on Seth Godin’s offer, by the way! Good luck on getting in!)
I’ll shoot you an email.
If anybody else here is interested, say the word.
Thanks again, Derrick
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Clay Burell
9 May 08 at 1:24 am
Hi Clay,
Good post. I like to add the occasional comment here and there. Best way to generate connections.
AideRSS has a nice add on for Google Reader that adds the comments link and at the foot of each post. It also ranks posts. This is handy if you are subscribed to sites like Read-Write Web where there are dozens of posts each day. It works in Firefox and Flock and other mozilla styled browsers I guess.
http://gr.aiderss.com/
Cheers, John
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John Larkin
9 May 08 at 12:55 pm
I am SO guilty of this. To try to change some of my ways I joined in the 31 day comment challenge which has made me see how complacent I have been in just reading from my RSS and not joining in or seeing some amazing conversations take place.
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Amanda
9 May 08 at 5:57 pm
Hi Clay,
Any idea why comments from your blog appear in my NetNewsWire reader while comments from other blogs do not?
Cheers,
Tod
Tod Bakers last blog post..Why We Share
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Tod Baker
10 May 08 at 11:00 am
[...] quickie: A couple weeks ago, I posted about the fatal weakness of RSS readers – their exclusion of a feed’s comments. Derrick Kwa replied with an offer to [...]
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