Comments feed

Hi Adam - I considered doing something similar over at my blog [1] . My idea (not implemented, after discussing with Lars [2] that this could be annoying for regular readers) was to add “(X comments)” behind the excerpt - something like the word-count in Mark’s RSS feed [3]… Setting up a separate feed like you’ve done might not be the worst solution for this :-) Keep us updated!

[1] http://www.jacobsen.no/anders/blog/ [2] http://www.ludvig.no/blog/ [3] http://diveintomark.org/

I kind of threw this out there not knowing if anyone would use it or find it useful. Looking at my server logs, apparently somone is using it.

So, fo those using the feed, what do you like about it? What would you like to see changed? I’m open to suggestions.

… I’m using it ;-) …

mostly so see how it develops and if I find it useful over time.

My 2 cents so far: it was a bit confusing that new comments come on top (reverse-chronological order) - despite “newst first” being the standard for weblogs; one is generally used to reading comments chronologically?

I went back and forth about what order to place the comments. The reason I settled on newest first was that I’m only showing the 5 latest comments for each entry. I was worried that having them in chronological order might be confusing since the first comment in the list might not actually be the first comment in the thread.

Was I wrong about this? I suppose that since people aren’t using the feed to read all the comments and mainly to keep tabs on new comments, then it doesn’t really matter.

What do you think about the format? I’m placing all the comments for an entry in one RSS item. I thought about making each entry it’s own item instead and dropping the entry excerpt. Would that be more useful?

Adam, If this is usefull Feedback (?), I’m using 0decafbad’s outline skin on Amphetadesk, which is changing its display of the Feedorder based on clickthrough, also each item is folded (outlined). So for me you could easily put all 19 comment-excerpts of “Related Entries Plugin” in the feed (as an example). I like the newest on top though! Can you may-be enlighten us how to make this MT-template? I would really like to syndicate my own comments feed… Lawrence

I want to avoid loading too many items into the feed to cut down on bandwidth needs — both mine and yours. That’s one reason I only have the last few comments in the feed. The other reason is that I want you to have to visit the site to read the entire thread. That way, you’re more likely to become an active participant in the discussion instead of only reading the comments of others.

Here’s the template I use for the comments feed: http://kalsey.com/blog/2002/09/creatingacomments_feed.stm

Must be something in the water.

Apparently over the last several days, different Weblogs have independantly created feeds for their comments.

Also if you don’t like my comments feed template, try these: http://philringnalda.com/archives/002320.php http://philringnalda.com/archives/002225.php http://www.syndic8.com/~wkearney/blogs/syndic8/archives/000012.html