But you see, this is a blog. Bloggers seem to rarely change their posts, and when they do they usually have a full feed so I can see what they’ve changed at a glance. I never said I minded that.

But you’re right. Strange is not the BBC. No sub-editors here. Not even any editorial process. No posts getting changed multiple times - usually just the once if ever. No brand, or contrived survey saying how trusted we are. No claims to authority. Just two people thinking out aloud and occasionally fucking up.

So what exactly is your point?

(Yes, I agree with you. And S.A. isn’t the BBC.)

Paid-for advertising in RSS is already being done - right here on Corante, as it happens. If Corante can do it, I don’t see why everyone else can’t do it too, but like I said in my post that’s not really my focus here.

As for RSS being mainstream… Well yes, geeks using specialised RSS readers with diffs turned on is edge case behaviour. I know I am an edge case, but the thing with edge case behaviours is that they often don’t stay on the edge, particularly if there is demonstrable utility. Remember when using a mobile phone was edge case behaviour?

RSS is being increasingly used by information sources that people care about. It’s not just blogs anymore. Via RSS, or RSS-like feeds, I can get my news, email, weather, photographs, bookmarks, stock market information, video, audio… I can track sellers on eBay, comparison shop… I can get all sorts of information, and the trend is towards more types of information being made available using RSS, not fewer.

Equally, the increasing numbers of blog writers and readers means increasing numbers of people being introduced to RSS by name.

But what I suspect will happen is that people will start using RSS without realising it. Homepages such as MyYahoo! or NetVibes, allow you to customise what you see by adding or removing feeds. All it is going to take is for one major web service to offer an easily customised RSS-based start page like theirs, and for information providers to create compelling RSS feeds to use in such a service, and you’ll see RSS cross the chasm in a single bound. They may never actually use the acronym RSS, but that won’t matter.

How long before everyone is using RSS as a matter of course? I have no idea. But I think that it’s inevitable, and that media companies should be working on the assumption that it’s going to happen sooner rather than later. By preparing for mass adoption they may even help encourage it, not to mention serving current RSS users better in the meantime.

Dave: GUIDs to keep the reader from seeing an article as new when minor changes are made, such as corrections to grammar, would be a good start. The issue then becomes when is something a minor change, and when is it a major change that needs a new GUID, or a new article. That’s an editorial decision that needs more thought from the media.

I think the reason that the BBC does so many updates to its RSS feed is that it’s working on a broadcasting paradigm where the bulletins are updated with latest info every time they are broadcast. The newspapers, on the other hand, are working within a ‘publish once’ paradigm, where you have a deadline for copy and after that, frankly, it’s too late.

I’m not sure quite how to deal with updates gracefully in the current paradigms. I know that frequently updated articles that keep changing annoy the hell out of me. I shall have to give this question more thought.

I have to add, though, that like you and Ben H, I really do appreciate the spread of RSS. I think it’s fantastically useful.

Ben M: What I don’t want to see is a different feed item every time a change is made. But I also don’t want an update every time a change is made. I think what I want is for fewer changes to be made, full stop. I have been told by a reliable source (one of the BBC execs, as it happens) that some stories get changed up to 100 times. That is, to my mind, excessive and a waste of time. Like I said before, I want the story I link to to stay the same - I honestly believe that that is good practice.

I don’t want to turn diffs off in my aggregator, because sometimes it *is* useful. For example, most bloggers I read rarely make changes to their posts, but when then do I want to see what they are. And as I said before, I know that this behaviour is edge case, but this is not really about the behaviour of my aggregator as it is about editorial policy, and seeing it revealed via RSS.

Also, I don’t want punchy and teasing, I want information, and I want enough of it to assess whether or not I want to read an article, because if I’m not sure, I am just not going to bother at all, rather than click through out of curiosity.

Your right about the fact that RSS doesn’t reflect the weighting of articles as per the site. I don’t find this a problem, actually, as I don’t need anyone to tell me what’s important - I can usually figure it out for myself based on the headline and summary.

So, I guess, the issue that underpins the diffs issue is ‘When is a change important enough that I want to read about it, and how do I want to be informed of that change?’.

What I really do not want to see are updates that deal with grammar, spelling or punctuation errors, or which are nothing more than rewriting the same information in a slightly different way. These sorts of updates just should not be happening at all - there should be an effective sub-editing system that catches these errors before publication. A news story is not a painting - it does not need endless tinkering to make it right. It needs to be researched, written, subbed and published and then left alone.

Major updates to a story should clearly be dealt with by the creation of a new article, leaving the old one to stand as archival material. I think that one is a no brainer.

Minor updates are trickier. Again, I think the problem here is that if you have a single new fact, or if the facts change (such as a death toll), should you add it in to the article or wait til you have a more substantive change to make which would count as a major edit? The line between major and minor edits is not always going to be a clear one, but my feeling is that what we are trying to do is shoehorn old-school broadcast thinking into a medium that doesn’t work that way.

So, instead of trying to figure out what is a minor change, and what to do with it, perhaps we need to think of more imaginative ways to deal with constantly updating information. A bit of freeform thinking out loud here…

The great thing about websites is that you can aggregate on one page a number of different items - think of transclusion in wikis. What would happen if each new additional paragraph of information was a new item which was transcluded into a main article, and marked in the RSS as an update? That means I can mentally filter out updates on stories that don’t interest me, and follow more closely stories that do. One of the problems with the current method of editing up stories is that half the time, which bit of information is new is not made clear and this would fix that.

That makes me wonder: is there a CMS for newspapers that’s best for generating RSS feeds?

Then again its not THAT big of a deal just to ignore it a second time around…

That being said, it is fair to say he has been the largest single contributer of the various RSS formats.

“NNW showing the diff’s is a major benefit, as otherwise you can get an updated item showing as unread again”

See, I would expect that read guid to remain read, regardless of whether it was updated or not.

That’s what my newsreader does (I used Newz Crawler). Maybe I’m living in ignorence of all those updates, but I have too many feeds to read - let alone re-read ones I’ve already looked at once!

… I meant of your newsreader, of course.

I think it’s correct for the minor updates to occur in the existing RSS feed. (But then as Gabe says in his post about this post: “1. Find good advisors familiar with the technologies (duh),” - so maybe he has a point and the BBC has been short changed! ho ho)

I’m a bit unsure as to what you want to see instead? A different feed item each time a change is made - however small…? You would just get inundated with changes - yes, the BBC tweaks it’s stories loads.

At least with the curret situation, whilst your newsreader might say the post is now unread again, a new item isn’t spawned for each change (causing a complete mess).

I would also point out that the unique id isn’t changed, so if your news reader is set to ignore major changes in the description tag and just set id’s to read/unread (as mine does) then the behaviour is actually correct.

I acutally wonder whether your newsreader, which I don’t deny is a popular one, is actually “super-serving” you by providing strike throughs, etc. Tracking the changes to RSS items in this way is not actually a function I would say is not actually a normal use of your browser. It’s a _really_ geeky thing!

The editing of RSS entries (which is actually editing the headline and summary that appears on the index the story is linked from) is great editorial manangement and really great SEO’ing. The story can have a depthy, descriptive headline + summary, but on the index can be given a more punchy, teasing headline/summary.

You have to remember that under different contexts different types of headline/summary work. Plus it’s important to look at what draws your users in and entices them to click through and visit the site (rather than view the short summary in the newreader). BTW I would personally love to see full-feed content in the RSS from the BBC, but that’s just my opinion and would negate the above need!

As someone who only consumes their news online, and indeed via RSS I would add one final point: Newsreaders still don’t accurately reflect the weighting that occurs on a site. IE what’s the “top story”, what’s the “second story”, etc.

If you visit the BBC, or any other news site, you can see this clearly. But it’s not refelcted in the RSS feeds, nor am I aware of any of the newsreaders currently support MS Simple List Extensions or any other technology that would enable news providers to include this information.