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A polite request for Fridaycities to fix their data feeds

Vodex

Posted by Vodex about 1 year ago
Last active about 1 year ago 9 responses

A techie pleads:

I can’t be alone in trying to use the ‘web feed’ for “The Knowledge” so new conversations wave a cheery hello automatically, rather than (failing to) visit the site in a staccato manner and inevitably missing stuff.

FC is a very modern put-together site, with tags and everything, but the atom feed (at http://london.fridaycities.com/knowledge.atom or the orange symbol next to “The Knowledge” for the uninitiated) doesn’t work right – it seems to not grasp that each conversation is unique, so when used, you wind up with a new copy every few hours. I’ve tried to use it more than once, & given up in the face of 300 identical items.

[Spoddy bit: each feed item must have a unique ID, but it seems to include time, e.g. tag:london.fridaycities.com,2007-03-10T02:04:21Z:http://london.fridaycities.com/knowledge/wanted-activity/conversations/9795 , so they aren’t unique; even the mighty Google Reader gets confused.]

I humbly implore FC towers to rectify this, to aid the legions of Web 2.0-savvy types flocking through the metaphorical swing doors.

(Yes, I did contact FC directly a few weeks back, but lament their lack of reply.)

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9 responses

danwrongpremium

The reason you are getting this behaviour is that conversations get flagged as new whenever they are responded to as well as when they are first post. The IDs are unique (they include the URI of the conversation which is unique) so that is not a problem.

I do agree that it’s confusing so I’ll change the RSS feeds back to just flagging new posts. I was just experimenting with a way of getting both new conversations and newly responded to conversations in the same feed.

Posted about 1 year ago by danwrong

Vodex

Thanks muchly!

This is just a suggestion, not sure I would use it for one, but why not have two separate feeds – “New Conversations” and the much busier “Conversation Responses” (or somesuch?)

Posted about 1 year ago by Vodex

Vodex

A gentle, Twitter-type nudge that this behaviour still continues – and an “as you were” if it hasn’t actually been tackled yet.

Of course, for all I know I’m the only one using the feeds…

Posted about 1 year ago by Vodex

Kay

No I use them and like having the new conversations as well as the response to existing conversations, although I don’t have a new entry for every new post, nor do I just have one for new conversations. So the logic isn’t quite right.

Although I’ve never had the amount of items that you would appear to have from your first post.

Posted about 1 year ago by Kay

Vodex

Although I’ve never had the amount of items that you would appear to have from your first post.

Google Reader’s gained over 100 new items in the last 24 hours…

Posted about 1 year ago by Vodex

pato

I had the same problem as Vodex with the Fridaycities feed in Google Reader. I eventually removed it as it was just too much.

Posted about 1 year ago by pato

aboutthisboy

I’d also prefer to just get new topics as if I want to follow reponses I will “Watch” the topic.

Posted about 1 year ago by aboutthisboy

Vodex

Until this gets resolved, I’ve created a ‘unique items’ feed at Yahoo Pipes which scratches our itch.

Here it is: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=MmO8fD3a2xG_j_Uq1vC6Jw

Use the ‘subscribe’ option on the page to add it to your RSS reader.

Posted about 1 year ago by Vodex

rhodri

f*cking genius. Vodex. I’ve been tinkering with Yahoo Pipes for various RSS things, but never thought of attempting this.

Posted about 1 year ago by rhodri