Rss feed link

[carols10cents]

This adds a link to the stats on a user's page that goes to the RSS view of their feed.

[wilkie]

It's weird. We added this... then we removed it... and then we are adding it back? Why?

I disagree with adding any links to the UI that people probably will not understand or use. Next thing you know, we're status.net with their 5 different feed links on every page.

[carols10cents]

I want to add this back for IFTTT integration, as mentioned in #658. I think people understand and want to use IFTTT, no?

What if this said "rss feed (can be used with IFTTT)" ?

[wilkie]

Why don't we just get IFTTT to understand us. :) I have never used it, and don't think it is very popular.

[steveklabnik]

Ifttt users have created 500,000 total tasks that have been executed 90 million times.

http://allthingsd.com/20120104/ifttt-raises-funding-for-its-digital-duct-tape-service/

And that's from January.

That said, I agree on not adding links we absolutely don't have to. There's no way they can't just read the autodiscovery link? that sucks.

[carols10cents]

This would let you use an RSS IFTTT trigger, rather than an rstat.us specific trigger.

[carols10cents]

If regular users don't even know we have an RSS feed available, they'll never know to try putting an rstat.us URL in to use the autodiscovery, so autodiscovery is irrelevant to human discovery that this link would solve.

[wilkie]

Hehe. They talk in terms of executions and not users. That's meaningful!

They should be able to pick up the feed link from the profile page. You're not supposed to give anything a direct RSS url. RSS is an alternate form of the timeline. There is no way some average user is going to care.

[wilkie]

Average users don't know what RSS is, though. Your average user is going to throw the profile url into the field and not look for an RSS link, because that's what is intuitive. And that's why we have alternate rels. Are you sure IFTTT isn't looking for yet-another-rel that we don't have?

[carols10cents]

would you PLEASE just go LOOK at IFTTT and try it??? https://ifttt.com/recipes?utf8=%E2%9C%93&sort=popular&channel=feed&t=any&type=triggers

[colindean]

Methinks it's not looking at link[@rel='alternate' and @type='application/atom+xml']/@href at all.

[steveklabnik]

Suuuucks. This is important enough to me that I'm :+1: on adding it over my 'cluttered interface' concerns.

[steveklabnik]

If regular users don't even know we have an RSS feed available, they'll never know to try putting an rstat.us URL in to use the autodiscovery, so autodiscovery is irrelevant to human discovery that this link would solve.

I was thinking you meant an rstat.us specific trigger, not a generic RSS one.

[wilkie]

This is not important. We can't add every little request. IFTTT doesn't mention RSS. Nobody is going to know how to use this properly... it'll just be a weird little link nobody understands. When you click on it, it'll just spit out some xml. It's confusing.

[steveklabnik]

IFTTT is a major way that people cross-post content to Twitter and other services. Supporting them is important.

[carols10cents]

IFTTT doesn't mention RSS

False.

[wilkie]

@carols10cents I just went through the process. It doesn't say RSS. It says feed url. What does that mean?

[colindean]

IFTTT doesn't mention RSS

False.

https://ifttt.com/feed

[wilkie]

Ah. It also says Atom. Our link should say Atom, because it's an atom feed.

[carols10cents]

@colindean if you put the actual RSS feed URL in that form, it will work.

[colindean]

@carols10cents yeah, I tried that right after :tongue:

[carols10cents]

It has the orange rss feed icon, which I added in this pull request, and i made the link say "rss feed" which matches the "feed" wording. i can change it to say "atom feed" if you would like.

[carols10cents]

The Feed Channel provides Triggers and Actions for working with RSS and Atom web feeds.

[colindean]

Asking helps, too, sometimes.

[wilkie]

I have also emailed them, but thanks! They should implement this... it's a bug. RSS feeds are meant to be discoverable. I have some reservations of a service that implies technical knowledge of its users, wants to provide simplicity, yet doesn't understand said technical knowledge themselves. :P But, I think they will fix it. It would make things so much easier, actually, and more foolproof. I think it'd really help people use IFTTT a bit more.

If they do, we can write a blog entry about how to use IFTTT with rstat.us, and it will be through the intuitive method that people have apparently been trying to do.

For now, we can add a link to the feed. Did you know that I was the person that originally added it, and somebody removed it due to it being useless? So I'm fighting on the side of my enemies because I figure that side should have a say. We are the project that stresses 'simplicity' and I will always fight against anything a common user would be confused by.

[wilkie]

Let's change it to say "Atom feed" (because that's more correct) and publish a blog post about how to use it with at least a couple of interesting rss/atom related things so that it actually becomes useful (because people aren't going to use it or know it is there if you don't tell them what the purpose is.)

In that blog post, I'd add some fuel to the fire and politely suggest that IFTTT should add feed discovery and ask people that use that service, or agree with this issue, to +1 the idea of fixing that particular bug by replying to a link to their tweet reply to @colindean. Because, if people believe (correctly) that their feed thing should work that way, then we should get them to fix it. :)

Sound good?

[carols10cents]

Sounds perfect. Thank you.