Truncated RSS Feed Purgatory

By Ed Kohler | Dec 9, 2007



As much as I HATE truncated RSS feeds, there are a few blogs with content that’s SO exceptional that I’m almost willing to put up with truncation.

For those of you who don’t know what the heck that first sentence means: when reading blogs and news sites through RSS readers like Google Reader, you’ll generally have access to full stories (title and story content) but sometimes you’ll only get the title (or a title with a short snippet from the story). Once you get used to reading full stories within an RSS reader, it becomes PAINFUL to have to click out to read stories from publishers who choose to restrict (truncate) their feeds.

In general, this is done to increase page views. As I’ve explained before, this is a risky proposition since you’re pissing off your most loyal readers.

Back to purgatory:

I’ve come to the realization that some sites are worth reading even if they’re truncated. Here’s a screenshot from my Google Reader account that shows how I’ve dealt with this situation:

Truncated Feed Folder

Notice the folder called “Truncated.” That’s where I store feeds that publish less than a full feed. It’s the last folder I view in my reader. I grabbed this screenshot at the start of the day where I had 208 new items to read. In this case, I would read 189 stories before considering hitting the Truncated folder. But that’s assuming that no new stories come in throughout the day. In many cases, I just mark the Truncated folder as read without review, or quickly scan through the headlines without clicking out.

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