this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2021
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RSS - Really Simple Syndication

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This link argues no. I would argue yes, because of a technical solution and a phenomenon I've observed.

The technical problem:

It’s not enough to interleave their posts into a “river” or “stream” paradigm, where only the most recent N items are shown in one big, combined, reverse-chronological list (much like a Twitter timeline), because many of them would get buried in the noise of higher-volume feeds and people’s tweets.

One of the really nice things about RSS is what it doesn't do. It doesn't order your content by obscure algorithms aiming to vacuum you further and further into an advertising-driven time suck, as Twitter now does.

That doesn't mean, however, that your only option is to present behavior chronologically.

The technical solution: I have my RSS reader do a round-robin ordering for each page displayed, so the higher-volume feeds pool at the bottom. This effect is more noted with a larger page size. For me, this works well enough. I don't see why marking "read all" is a bad thing, and I do it decently regularly.

The phenomenon: Navigating directly to lifehacker.com or whatever other high-volume site feels like gambling. All the colorful previews are engaging, and it all seems to grab me more than my staid feed reader's presentation. It's tempting to roll the dice and see if there's something new. It makes me less this to consume everything in my feed reader is what I guess I'm saying. That's valuable to me.

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