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RSS ZERO ISN'T THE PATH TO RSS JOY |
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2023-07-29 |
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FEED OVERLOAD IS REAL |
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The week before last, Katie shared with me that article from last month, Who |
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killed Google Reader? I'd read it before so I didn't bother clicking through |
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again, but we did end up chatting about RSS a bit (You'd be forgiven for |
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thinking that RSS was my favourite topic, given that so-far-this-year I've |
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written about improving WordPress's feeds, about mathematical quirks in |
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FreshRSS, on using XPath scraping as an RSS alternative (twice), and the joy |
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of getting notified when a vlog channel is ressurected (thanks to RSS). I |
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swear I have other interests.). |
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Screenshot: Google Reader Notifier popup advises of "461 unread items". |
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Katie "abandoned feeds a few years ago" because they were "regularly ending up |
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with 200+ unread items that felt overwhelming". |
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Conversely: I think that dropping your feed reader because there's too much to |
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read is... solving the wrong problem. |
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A white man with dark hair, wearing jeans and a t-shirt, moves to push over a stack of carboard boxes, each smaller than the one beneath it. From bottom to top, the boxes are labelled: stress, email client, mobile pings, doomscrolling, social media silos... and the very top, very smallest box, which glows with sunbeams emitted from it, reads "rss reader". |
image/jpeg |
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Dave Rupert last week wrote about his feed reader's "unread" count having |
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grown to a mammoth 2,000+ items, and his plan to reduce that. |
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I think that he, like Katie, might be looking at his reader in a different way |
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than I do mine. |
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FreshRSS sidebar, showing 567 unread items (of which 1 are comics, 2 are friends, 186 are communities, 1 are distractions, 278 are geeky, 1 is "me", 57 are youtube, 13 are strangers, 1 is software, 7 are rss club, 29 are podcasts, and 3 are polyamory. A further 107 are marked as favourites. The "friends" and "rss club" categories are showing warning triangles. |
image/png |
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RSS IS NOT EMAIL! |
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I've been in the position that Katie and David describe: of feeling |
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overwhelmed by the sheer volume of unread items. And I know others have, too. |
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So let me share something I've learned sooner: |
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There's nothing special about reaching Inbox Zero in your feed reader. |
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It's not noble nor enlightened to get to the bottom of your "unread" list. |
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Your ? feed ? reader ? is ? not ? an ? email ? client. ? |
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The idea of Inbox Zero as applied to your email inbox is about productivity. |
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Any message in your email might be something that requires urgent action, and |
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you won't know until you filter through and categorise . |
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But your RSS reader doesn't (shouldn't?) be there to add to your to-do list. |
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Your RSS reader is a list of things you might like to read. In an ideal world, |
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reaching "RSS Zero" would mean that you've seen everything on the Internet |
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that you might enjoy. That's not enlightened; that's sad! |
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Google Reader's "Congratulations, you've reached the End of the Internet." Easter Egg screen, shown when all your feeds are empty. |
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USE RSS FOR JOY |
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My RSS reader is a place of joy, never of stress. I've tried to boil down the |
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principles that makes it so, and here they are: |
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* Zero is not the target.The numbers are to inspire about how much there is |
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"out there" for you, not to enumerate how much work need have to do. |
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* Group your feeds by importance.Your feed reader probably lets you group |
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(folder, tag...) your feeds, so you can easily check-in on what you care about |
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and leave other feeds for a rainy day. (If your feed reader doesn't support |
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any kind of grouping, get a better reader.) This is good. |
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* Don't read every article.Your feed reader gives you the convenience of |
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keeping content in one place, but you're not obligated to read every single |
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one. If something doesn't interest you, mark it as read and move on. No |
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judgement. |
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* Keep things for later.Something you want to read, but not now? Find a way to |
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"save for later" to get it out of your main feed so you. Don't have to scroll |
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past it every day! Star it or tag it (If your feed reader doesn't support any |
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kind of marking/favouriting/tagging of articles, get a better reader.) or push |
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it to your link-saving or note-taking app. I use a link shortener which then |
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feeds back into my feed reader into a "for later" group! |
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* Let topical content expire.Have topical/time-dependent feeds (general news |
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media, some social media etc.)? Have reader "purge" unread articles after a |
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time. I have my subscription to BBC News headlines expire after 5 days: if |
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I've taken that long to read a headline, it might as well disappear. (If your |
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feed reader doesn't support customisable expiry times... well that's not too |
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unusual, but you might want to consider getting a better reader.) |
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* Use your feed reader deliberately.You don't need popup notifications (a new |
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article's probably already up to an hour stale by the time it hits your |
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reader). We're all already slaves to notifications! Visit your reader when it |
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suits you. I start and end every day in mine; most days I hit it again a |
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couple of other times. I don't need a notification: there's always new |
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content. The reader keeps track of what I've not looked at. |
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* It's not just about text.Don't limit your feed reader to just text. Podcasts |
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are nothing more than RSS feeds with attached audio files; you can keep track |
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in your reader if you like. Most video platforms let you subscribe to a feed |
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of new videos on a channel or playlist basis, so you can e.g. get notified |
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about YouTube channel updates without having to fight with The Algorithm. |
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Features like XPath Scraping in FreshRSS let you subscribe to services that |
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don't even have feeds: to watch the listings of dogs on local shelter websites |
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when you're looking to adopt, for example. |
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* Do your reading in your reader.Your reader respects your preferences: colour |
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scheme, font size, article ordering, etc. It doesn't nag you with newsletter |
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signup popups, cookie notices, or ads. Make the most of that. Some RSS feeds |
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try to disincentivise this by providing only summary content, but a good feed |
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reader can work around this for you, fetching actual content in the |
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background. (FreshRSS calls the feature that fetches actual post content from |
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the resulting page "Article CSS selector on original website", which is a bit |
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of a mouthful, but you can see what it's doing. If your feed reader doesn't |
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support fetching full content... well, it's probably not that big a deal, but |
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it's a good nice-to-have if you're shopping around for a reader, in my |
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opinion.) |
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* Use offline time to catch up on your reading.Some of the best readers |
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support offline mode. I find this fantastic when I'm on an aeroplane, because |
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I can catch up on all of the interesting articles I'd not had time to yet |
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while grounded, and my reading will get synchronised when I touch down and |
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disable flight mode. |
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* Make your reader work for you.A feed reader is a tool that works for you. If |
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it's causing you pain, switch to a different tool (There's so much choice in |
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feed readers, and migrating between them is (usually) very easy, so everybody |
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can find the best choice for them. Feedly, Inoreader, and The Old Reader are |
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popular, free, and easy-to-use if you're looking to get started. I prefer a |
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selfhosted tool so I use the amazing FreshRSS (having migrated from Tiny Tiny |
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RSS). Here's some more tips on getting started. You might prefer a desktop or |
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mobile tool, or even something exotic: part of the beauty of RSS feeds is |
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they're open and interoperable, so if for example you love using Slack, you |
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can use Slack to push feed updates to you and get almost all the features you |
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need to do everything in my list, including grouping (using channels) and |
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saving for later (using Slackbot/"remind me about this"). Slack's a perfectly |
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acceptable feed reader for some people!), or reconfigure the one you've got. |
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And if the way you find joy from RSS is different from me, that's fine: this |
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is a personal tool, and we don't have to have the same answer. |
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And if you'd like to put those tips in your RSS reader to digest later or at |
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your own pace, you can: here's an RSS feed containing (only) these RSS tips! |
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LINKS |
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Katie's DreamWidth weblog (https://katieastrophe.dreamwidth.org) |
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Who killed Google Reader?, on The Verge (https://www.theverge.com) |
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My blog post: Better WordPress RSS Feeds (https://danq.me) |
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My blog post: Mathematical Quirks in FreshRSS (https://danq.me) |
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My blog post: New Far Side comics in FreshRSS using XPath |
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My blog post: Far Side Daily Dose comics via XPath in FreshRSS |
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My blog repost: Satoru Iwata's First Commercial Game Has A Secret, which I discovered thanks to RSS (https://danq.me) |
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Dave Rupert's blog (https://daverupert.com) |
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Dave Rupert's blog post: One friend a day (https://daverupert.com) |
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End Of The Internet (https://hmpg.net) |
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My blog post: BBC News... Without The Sport (https://danq.me) |
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My blog note: "My @FreshRSS installation is the first, last, and sometimes only place I go on the Internet." (https://danq.me) |
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Article explaining how to find the semi-secret URLs of RSS feeds of YouTube channels and playlists (https://www.ghacks.net) |
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My blog post: XPath Scraping with FreshRSS (https://danq.me) |
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My blog post (and associated vlog): Dog; Person, in which I talk about adopting our dog (https://danq.me) |
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Feedly (https://feedly.com) |
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Inoreader (https://www.inoreader.com) |
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The Old Reader (https://theoldreader.com) |
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FreshRSS (https://freshrss.org) |
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Tiny Tiny RSS (https://tt-rss.org) |
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AboutFeeds.com, which provides tips on getting started with a feed reader (https://aboutfeeds.com) |
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Slack (https://slack.com) |
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(Official/in-house) Slack plugin that adds RSS feed support to Slack (https://slack.com) |
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Link to an RSS feed containing (only) these RSS tips (https://danq.me) |
application/rss+xml |
