Pony Request: RSS Edition

April 24, 2013 11:30 AM

Would it be possible to have the "Contact Activity" feed available as RSS? I always forget it's there until i happen to be on the main page and notice that my friends have been posting cool stuff.
posted by softlord to Feature Requests at 11:30 AM (26 comments total)

Thanks for the suggestion. This is something we'll need to discuss, but I think we can probably work something out.
posted by pb (staff) at 11:42 AM on April 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

I like this idea.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 11:44 AM on April 24, 2013

This is a pretty good idea, but it's new and different, so therefore hated and feared.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 11:57 AM on April 24, 2013 [3 favorites]

oh this is just the prettiest pony in the land.
posted by nadawi at 11:58 AM on April 24, 2013

I love this idea. But how will I read it come July 1st?

(I need to get on top of finding a new RSS reader.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 12:04 PM on April 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

This reminds me that at one point yesterday my contact activity sidebar was entirely filled with notices that various contacts of mine had made highly-favorited comments, each of which was in the thread I posted so I am clearly some sort of hero.
posted by shakespeherian at 12:04 PM on April 24, 2013 [2 favorites]

I don't usually jump on the pony express but I really like this idea.
posted by Room 641-A at 12:05 PM on April 24, 2013

I would be all over this. Hopefully Feedly will survive.
posted by donnagirl at 12:16 PM on April 24, 2013

Ooooooh! I want this pony. I would feed it a shiny apple every day.
posted by arcticseal at 12:35 PM on April 24, 2013

I love this pony! Arcticseal can feed it apples, and I'll brush it and put ribbons in its mane, cool? *hugs pony*
posted by MeghanC at 12:36 PM on April 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

This reminds me that at one point yesterday my contact activity sidebar was entirely filled with notices that various contacts of mine had made highly-favorited comments, each of which was in the thread I posted so I am clearly some sort of hero.

It might also mean that you have a bunch of mouthy contacts.

(I am not ruling out that both options are true.)
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:06 PM on April 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

How dare you. I don't even have a mouth. Just a cheezborger/tiny beer/R. Kelly/Prince hole.
posted by SpiffyRob at 1:14 PM on April 24, 2013

cool?

Pony share!
posted by arcticseal at 1:24 PM on April 24, 2013

Just a cheezborger/tiny beer/R. Kelly/Prince hole.

I know your eyes in the Billy Goat
I see your dark beer from the pouring tap
And the moment that you wandered far from me
I wanna hear again your karaoke rap

And you come to me in a MeTa thread
Mention Prince, R. Kelly, and then softly head
And it's me you need to show:
How could you forget, how could you forget, how could you forget

I really need to know
'Cause you didn't mention the Bee Gees
It's breaking me down
When it should have been the first
They belong to you and me
posted by shakespeherian at 1:31 PM on April 24, 2013

I love it when a pony comes together.

*cue theme music*
posted by zombieflanders at 2:11 PM on April 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

While we're talking about outdated protocols, when will we get the gopher server back?

I kid, I kid
although it'd be pretty cool to have a gopher server
posted by Johnny Assay at 2:39 PM on April 24, 2013

While we're talking about outdated protocols, when will we get the gopher server back?

Check your browser, it might not support gopher: any more. I remember being surprised when FF dropped it and wondering why. The answer was that all extra code was any extra place for bugs to show up, some of which could be security problems. I thought it was a very good answer.
posted by benito.strauss at 3:08 PM on April 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

my mefi project from last week does this
posted by rakish_yet_centered at 3:14 PM on April 24, 2013

This request ties in well with something I inquired about (off site) last year... A way to filter what level of contact is displayed on the sidebar. I mark all the people I meet IRL, but that doesn't mean I want to see everything by them that is posted or favorited. I would love to only display, say, those I mark as "muse."
posted by terrapin at 5:27 PM on April 24, 2013 [1 favorite]

Do i win the internet?
posted by softlord at 6:26 PM on April 24, 2013

This is an awesome pony.
posted by immlass at 9:19 PM on April 24, 2013

GREAT pony!
posted by zarq at 4:59 AM on April 25, 2013

If we're going to be talking about RSS, I'd like a small herd of ponies:

• Some kind of feed that bridges the gap between the main RSS feed and the infodump.
• Some way of differentiating between the above-the-fold portion of a post, and the whole post. (This may just be a shortcoming of RSS that we have to live with)
• Fix RSS comment URLs. This works:

  http://metatalk.metafilter.com/22597/Pony-Request-RSS-Edition/rss

  This doesn't (the faq says it should):

  http://metatalk.metafilter.com/22597/rss

  But this does:

  http://metatalk.metafilter.com/22597/Hey-matt-this-seems-broken/rss

posted by schmod at 8:16 AM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

Fix RSS comment URLs.

Thanks for the heads up, fixed that up.

The more inside section is separated from the above-the-fold portion by two <br> tags. Those tags are also allowed above the fold, so it's not completely reliable. But you'd catch 99% of posts by looking for the first instance of two <br> tags.

Not sure what you mean by bridging the gap.
posted by pb (staff) at 10:02 AM on April 25, 2013 [1 favorite]

Contact activity feeds are go! If you visit your Recent Contact Activity page you should see a new Subscribe link in the headline. Click that to get your Contact Activity feed URL. Let us know here if you run into problems.
posted by pb (staff) at 2:43 PM on April 25, 2013 [8 favorites]

Oooh shiny! Thanks so much.
posted by donnagirl at 7:40 PM on April 25, 2013