#dev 2025-11-09
2025-11-09 UTC
barnaby, [jeremycherfas]1, [artlung]1, moose3333, ben, hidjy[d], thej, doesnm, posixlycorrect, gRegor, nnrx, roxwize, sandra, suki, jjuran, DanQ, oslek, oodani, grufwub, mahboubine and doesnm_ joined the channel
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[tantek] feed file << Criticism: 2025-11-04 [https://refp.se/articles/the-weight-of-an-rss-feed The hidden psychological cost of maintaining an RSS feed] <blockquote>I'm choosing to publish content that people have to actively seek out. A deliberate click is different from a passive subscription added to slack clients which I never thought would see nor discuss my words.</blockquote>
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Loqi ok, I added "Criticism: 2025-11-04 [https://refp.se/articles/the-weight-of-an-rss-feed The hidden psychological cost of maintaining an RSS feed] <blockquote>I'm choosing to publish content that people have to actively seek out. A deliberate click is different from a passive subscription added to slack clients which I never thought would see nor discuss my words.</blockquote>" to the "See Also" section of /feed_file https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=105834&oldid=101753
# [tantek] feed file << * ^ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45825555 commentary threads on Hackernews] <blockquote>Ever since I first started blogging I have struggled with performance anxiety, and I have concluded that much of this boils down to me adding an RSS feed to my site.</blockquote>
# Loqi ok, I added "* ^ [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45825555 commentary threads on Hackernews] <blockquote>Ever since I first started blogging I have struggled with performance anxiety, and I have concluded that much of this boils down to me adding an RSS feed to my site.</blockquote>" to the "See Also" section of /feed_file https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=105835&oldid=105834
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[artlung] Publishing a public website is in a very real sense like walking down to Speaker's Corner in London and talking on a bullhorn. An RSS feed automates it, but it's not materially different. It's an affirmative publishing act either way. _"Perhaps I am overthinking this"_ muses the author: to which I say, sure, but it's beautiful to be so vulnerable and to think out loud in public.
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# Loqi publics are the combined set of people who make up the readership or audience of a post https://indieweb.org/publics
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[Al_Abut] Funny, I have different reaction to supporting RSS on my site - it makes me feel kind of lonely sometimes.
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# [Al_Abut] It’s important to me to put it out there because I love being a consumer of RSS so much, and I know it’s private by default so I have no comments or interactions or tracking or anything, but that’s also part of what makes it a bit of a feeling like I’m shouting into the void sometimes.
# [tantek] Even in that Speaker’s Corner analogy, there’s perhaps an analog. Publishing a public blog is like walking down to Speaker’s Corner, stepping up onto a soapbox, and speaking your mind. Adding a feed file is like that except with a bullhorn. They are materially different with different likely outcomes
# [Al_Abut] The part of the public square analogy that breaks down to me is you can see whether you’re attracting a crowd and what you’re saying is resonating, or if you’re being completely ignored, or something in between where a handful get curious.
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# [Al_Abut] HWC helps close that social gap for me
# [Al_Abut] Well, I guess the analogy doesn’t work for me because I didn’t even think of looking at the server logs, ha ha
# [Al_Abut] Plus, wouldn’t those hits just be the periodic scraping by the feed readers rather than it being a proxy for the number of people actually using those feed readers? I mean, those feeds are gonna get cached on the server side for the cloud services like Feedly, for example.
# [Al_Abut] Plus, the part of the analogy that I’m picturing in my head is the actual reaction, not just crowd size. Like people nodding along people or hating what I’m saying or people not even caring and walking by. You get a little bit of taste of that from other types of social media platforms, which is what obviously makes it so addictive.
# [Al_Abut] So the social interaction, especially for small group sizes. I’m not imagining most people with personal sites are publishing broadsheets consumed by the millions at a city scale
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# [Al_Abut] [snarfed] good point. I do post full content feeds because that’s important to me, to the point that I’m going to migrate my SSG to support it better.
# [Al_Abut] So I don’t really care about the analytics that much, it’s more about curiosity and also pining for that real world interaction
# [Al_Abut] Ha! I just found out Netlify’s server logs are a paid feature and I’d never dream of paying for it, so that shows how little I actually care I guess 🤷
# [Al_Abut] So I’m blissfully unaware of whether there’s a hidden crowd of a thousand people hanging on my every word, haha
# [Al_Abut] (very unlikely)
# [Al_Abut] Do you guys check your server logs for RSS hits?
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# [artlung] Someone posted in this or another channel the other day lamenting some reddit channel was all about "how do I get traffic?" - to which I would say: for some folks traffic is a goal. It's a legitimate goal! And deciding what the bounds are for how you seek that traffic, and what to do if you can't get that traffic unless you exceed those bounds is important.
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[jeremycherfas] I have to respectfully disagree with the RSS/bullhorn at Speakers’ Corner analogy. The bullhorn deafens the audience at the front. Which is kind of how I personally feel about POSSE Everything Everywhere. I never know where best to interact with things. I’m not saying people shouldn’t do it if they want. I’m saying I feel deafened.
# [artlung] (yeah, my speaker's corner analogy is weak. I've used that to describe a personal website, and I've also described it as like going down to your laundromat or grocery store and tacking up a flyer, neither analogy is really "internet publishing" but few things are good analogies for this peculiar powerful thing we do)
# [jeremycherfas] I used to have a photo of a giant printing press back in the day (2001) when I was trying to persuade my bosses and colleagues that I should be permitted to publish on the web. That’s still the analogy I like best. The freedom of the press, almost for free.
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# carrvo tantek++ we certainly have incomplete knowledge but not everyone acknowledges that 🙁
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capjamesg [artlung] https://jamesg.blog/assets/js/seasonal.js is now live with your updated code!
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# [tantek] I will say it does bug me (a bit) when people mis-expand the 'E' in POSSE as meaning "everywhere" when right there on the /POSSE page it is defined as "elsewhere". The page also talks about how you POSSE is specifically a solution to *staying* connected with existing connections on silos, not for "growth" or some other thing like "more traffic" for folks that have never used that silo before.
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