Meta RSS please

November 4, 2005 4:49 PM

Strangely, I enjoy reading MeTa far more than MeFi and AskMe. It saddens me that there isn't an RSS feed. I've searched the archives and found this and this, neither of which provide any real reasons why there isn't a feed in existence. Any chance that we can get one?
posted by panoptican to Feature Requests at 4:49 PM (24 comments total)

this is the crappiest callout EVAR.
posted by quonsar at 7:04 PM on November 4, 2005

Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
posted by selfnoise at 7:10 PM on November 4, 2005

Wow, that's actually a pretty neat thing to try to imagine. I got all tingly.
posted by panoptican at 7:15 PM on November 4, 2005

I can't find a citation, but I remember Matt saying he thought Metatalk was already overused without people subscribing to it like a gossip feed.
posted by Eideteker at 7:33 PM on November 4, 2005

yeah, no matter how useful it would be. So stop asking.
posted by puke & cry at 7:39 PM on November 4, 2005

Don't be sad.
posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 8:16 PM on November 4, 2005

Though I have not put any effort in after initial development, many months ago, you can get an RSS feed of MeTa here.
posted by sequential at 8:39 PM on November 4, 2005

You're not the only one who likes MetaTalk.

A MetaTalk feed would be terrific. I'd actually start up my feedreader if I had that.
posted by timeistight at 8:44 PM on November 4, 2005

Gentlemen, start your feedreaders!
posted by namespan at 8:55 PM on November 4, 2005

It's because we all really want a good arguement.
Maybe we don't want it directed at us personally, and Bushfilter, abortionfilter, Creationfilter, etc. is too overdone/lame.
Every once in a while there is a real gem of a arguement/flameout that will be referenced for aeons of MeFi blue to come, and we don't want to miss out on getting the one post in the comment that every one else dittoes or comments negatively on.
posted by Balisong at 9:09 PM on November 4, 2005

And you shouldn't use a conjunction to end a sentance with.
posted by Balisong at 9:11 PM on November 4, 2005

This feels like listening to the police scanner so you can go out and see all the cool crime scenes.
posted by smackfu at 9:19 PM on November 4, 2005

"I can't find a citation, but I remember Matt saying he thought Metatalk was already overused without people subscribing to it like a gossip feed.

Right - we can't have a MeTa RSS feed because people might read it. I get that.
posted by nthdegx at 10:58 PM on November 4, 2005

I like metatalk because it's like the townhall meetings on The Gilmore Girls. Wacky, I tell you, wacky.
posted by taz at 11:27 PM on November 4, 2005

But this town hall is full of Kirks.
posted by dabitch at 12:59 AM on November 5, 2005

fwiw, sequential's feed works fine in bloglines.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 8:46 AM on November 5, 2005

actually, wait. sorta it does.

it appears that every time a thread gets new comments, it considers the thread a new entry, but still leaves the old entry on the feed.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 8:49 AM on November 5, 2005

Count, I'm looking into that now. Thanks for letting me know.
posted by sequential at 9:14 AM on November 5, 2005

Sorry for the delay. The feed is now producing valid RSS for version 0.91. I'm fixing version 2.0 at the moment.

Please let me know if the problems you were experiencing with Bloglines continue.
posted by sequential at 11:47 AM on November 5, 2005

Count, when I added the feed to Bloglines, I received a cached version of the feed from April 11, 2005. Do you get the same behavior? The underlying feed does not have this problem, just through Bloglines.

*scratches head*
posted by sequential at 12:18 PM on November 5, 2005

Doh. You're right, sequential. The actual feed is OK, it's some caching thing.

The feed will work properly when new entries come in, no doubt. Thanks.
posted by Count Ziggurat at 1:04 PM on November 5, 2005

One last update and I'm done for the day.

1) Valid RSS 2.0 is being produced here, if you should want it. The major difference between 0.91 and 2.0, from a readers point of view, is that version 2.0 posts are stamped with the time and date they are posted whereas version 0.91 is stamped with the date it is downloaded or the date the RSS feed was last published. (Not certain which is true.)

2) If you add an RSS feed to Thunderbird, delete it and then add it again, Thunderbird displays the wrong results. To solve this problem, go to where your Thunderbird profile is stored on disk, your user directory, and then News & Blogs. Rename, edit or delete the file feeditems.rdf. If you rename the file, it will show up as an RSS feed in Thunderbird. If you delete it, like I have done, there does not appear to be any negative consequences. (Someone correct me if I am wrong.) You're on your own if you edit it.
posted by sequential at 2:03 PM on November 5, 2005

And not enough Miss Pattys.
posted by signal at 3:02 PM on November 5, 2005

Thanks, sequential. It seems to work fine for me in Bloglines.
posted by sveskemus at 3:36 PM on November 5, 2005