Why don't forums have rss feeds?

[ClassyPete]

I just got into rss and it is really saving me lots of time catching up on news, articles and new products...

So why don't forums have rss feeds for each category? Maybe they do and I am blind. Are there any plans to add rss feeds to this forum?

[bhartzer]

The creators of the most popular forum software packages haven't included RSS as a feature. But, theres no reason why it couldn't be included; if the software you're using doesn't have it, then you'd need to get someone to program it for you.

[trillianjedi]

It's dead easy to add one yourself.

To be honest, none of them work that well. Most simply shove everything into the feed, and that's really unnecessary.

RSS feeds should be manually parsed by admin/mods for quality.

I think WebmasterWorld's own RSS feed is a good example of the right way to use one.

plans to add to this forum

Do you mean WebmasterWorld? That would be here:-

[webmasterworld.com...]

TJ

[httpwebwitch]

most popular forum software packages haven't included RSS

... but the *best* ones have.
RSS isn't very old; but forums have been around longer than the WWW. In many cases you have webmasters who have been too lazy/busy to update & upgrade their fora platform, webmasters who don't know how to do it, or issues with large-scale migration from one forum platform to another. Adding RSS is easy if you've got an open-source PHP+SQL forum, but way more difficult if you have 1M threads running in a file-based Perl job

[encyclo]

Regarding the lack of RSS feeds for individual forums at WebmasterWorld, check out this thread:

FAQ: RSS on individual forums? [webmasterworld.com]

[ClassyPete]

trillianjedi - thanks for the link, the rss link on the front page is hard to find :-/

So reasons why forum owners have not to provide rss feeds..

1. don't know how
2. extra bandwidth
3. more lurkers
4. stealing content

Don't most blogs have to deal with the same issues?

A decent start would be to offer rss feeds (for each category) with titles of new posts. This could let someone monitor many forums and jump in when they find something that interests them.

I see rss feeds for forums as a way to increase participation not decrease it.

[graywolf]

If I could quickly see in my RSS reader what topics were going on in other forum threads instead of having to navigate to them I would participate more, without a question. What would be kick ass cool would be being able to track some other senior members posts in my feed reader.

If bandwidth is an issue use one of the feed services. Costs are pretty minimal and you can even set them up so they stay on this domain (ie webmasterworld.com/supporters/feed/) but actually suck up the feed services bandwidth.

Scraping is definitely an issue, and RSS absolutely lowers the skill level required to be a scraper. Why not make RSS feeds an option only for supporters? Put the feeds behind a password, and you could get all cloak and dagger and embed a hidden ID in the feed to help "identify" who's scraping?

[Tastatura]

If I could quickly see in my RSS reader what topics were going on in other forum threads instead of having to navigate...

recent post [webmasterworld.com] link (upper - middle part of the page) sort of does that - it lists all recent posts.

I do like the idea of supporters RSS feed...

[graywolf]

>Recent post link

Yep here's the way I see it, an RSS feed is like having a newspaper delivered to your door step every morning. Having to visit the forum is like going to the library and having to read the copy there. The information is the same but the way it's consumed is totally different.

[Brett_Tabke]

> Don't most blogs have to deal with the same issues?

Blogging is primarily a one way system. Even with comments turned on, a blog survives if everyone reads and doesn't participate. Forums however mandate a two way communication and wither without it.

Everything I have done for 20 years of sysoping has been all aimed at encouraging participation and putting members first. RSS tends to be about 'drive by' visitors.

> scrapping issues

big time. We often delay putting items in the homepage rss feed until other sites catch up. We don't want to feed them the story. I even cloak a few rss entries so that news sites can pick them up before raiders can scrap them. There is a bit of rss war going on in that regard.