Duncan has an interesting post on his blog, DoctorVee, about the futility of partial RSS feeds and why everybody should be publishing in full.
I completely agree with his argument – for blogs – but don’t think it’s completely necessary for news sites or even for blogs with a more news style.
I prefer full feeds for blogs and partial feeds for news sites – not that I’m a big rss reader though – I find it easier to just have a bookmark folder of all my favourite blogs and open them in tabs.
However – the reason I prefer partial for news and full for blogs is because of the difference in approach to writing posts.
When you write for news you construct your story like a pyramid – with the basics of the story being told within the first paragraph and the meat of the story within the first four – anything after that is just padding or extra info.
So with this you only need a partial feed as you know what the story is about within a couple of paras anyway.
Whereas with a blog post – the feature tends to be more like a book, short story or magazine feature where the article builds to a conclusion.
This is why with a blog you need a full feed to get the story and read the conclusion.
I know sploggers can be a pain in the rss but it’s as much of a fact of life of blogging as comment spam – something you’ve got to sit back and accept.
Ryan Morrison is a geek, journalist and someone obsess with media, technology and geek culture. He writes for the BBC in Jersey on any subject that falls on his desk and presents a show about the islands music scene. He has been blogging for six years.