Follow a feed or collection without adding to any collection
Right now, you can follow a collection, which automatically adds all
new programmes in that collection (or feed) to your collection.
This leads to huge collections.
It dilutes the quality of collections, and the meaning of the
collection count, because hand-picked collections are lumped in with
these auto-collections. (Huge collections also seem to have become a
performance head-ache)
I propose that we remove the feature to add whole collections
automatically.
There are two other important uses for following collections:
1) Create an aggregated feed out of all the source feeds.
2) The social aspect: Following a feed registers as a vote, you can
see who also follows a collection, and so on
We should have a mechanism for 2. I am thinking that you can follow a
collection, and it would just count that.
It would not add anything to any collection, in fact you do not need
to select a target collection when following.
This works just like "digg"ing a story.
We could also offer a solution for 1, but this is just RSS aggregation
and can be done by other tools,
so I think that is low priority.
Thilo
shared this idea
5 comments
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Gregor Gramlich commented
This now seems to go in the direction of what I thought a collection would be. The default "My Queue" just means "I am interested" and only helps collecting. I would not subscribe to it, but when I want to subscribe to a feed / program, I shift it over to a different collection.
That is, why I opened http://feedback.spokenword.org/pages/25024-enhancement-and-new-feature-requests/suggestions/302928
It seems to solve part of this request as well. -
Adminspokenword
(Admin, SpokenWord.org)
commented
Again, from email, Thilo later added:
Actually, I what I could do right now is to set up a collection and "collect" all my feeds. I would not subscribe to this collection, since I am already directly subscribed to the feeds. I could use that feed to find the programmes I need to rate. I do not need the option to delete older programmes, because it does not bother me if the older programmes are still there, the first page would only show the newest programmes anyway.
My main point was that the existence of this kind of "collection" dilutes the value of the curated collections.
The "social intelligence" of its collections makes for the value of SpokenWord itself, I think.
If so, we should strive to ensure that for every programme that appears in a collection a human being specifically made the decision to put it there.
Simple RSS aggregation is also a nice feature, but if we have it, let's keep it apart from the curated collections.
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Adminspokenword
(Admin, SpokenWord.org)
commented
Copying the discussion from email so we don't lose it...
On Jul 23, 2009, at 4:31 AM, Thilo Planz wrote:
I think we should take this chance to re-think the following collections feature...I propose that we remove the feature to add whole collections automatically...I am thinking that you can follow a collection, and it would just count that. It would not add anything to any collection, in fact you do not need to select a target collection when following. This works just like "digg"ing a story. We would need to work out how it differs from the rating feature, though. Maybe we could combine these two; no following at all, use the rating data for this: "these users like this feed (3 stars or more)"
Doug then wrote:
Maybe I'm missing Thilo's point here, but if Following a collection doesn't *do* anything, why would you Follow one?
And Thilo replied:
Well, it does *do* something. It does the same thing a digg does on digg.
That information can be used in many ways.
For one thing, we could then show the list of feeds that a user follows on his profile page.
Every time I want to rate a programme on SpokenWord right now (and most programmes are not in my queue, they come directly from iTunes), I have to go to the search page, type the name of the feed (because the programme itself is sometimes not yet indexed), click in the result page on a programme of that feed, click on the programme page on the link for the feed, and then can finally give out my stars.
This is too many clicks, and more importantly also involves the keyboard.
Doug wrote:
Idea: When you follow a collection or subscribe to a feed, suppose there was an option that implied "Keep the <#> most-recent programs from this collection/feed in my target collection." When we received a new program from the source collection feed, we'd add it to your collection. If after doing so there was more than <#> episodes from that source, we'd remove the older ones. If you've already downloaded them from your collection's RSS feed, you'd have them. No problem. (And they would still be in your History collection.) Used this way, your collection would automatically prune itself. And you could set <#> to any number for each feed you subscribe to or collection you follow.
Thilo wrote:
Sure, that is a way, but more complicated (UI-wise and on the backend) than just marking the feed.
I think there is value in keeping the "data collecting" part separate from the "interesting, automated actions derived from that data" part.
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Thilo
commented
As a workaround, since the feeds I subscribe to is a (significant) subset of the feeds I have rated, a list of feeds that I have rated would be a good starting point.
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Thilo
commented
This would make it easier for me to find the programmes I have just listened to on my iPod in order to rate them. If I could mark all the feeds I subscribe to, they would show up on my profile page. Now only my queue (and other collections) are there, the rest I have to find using the search pages. (Most of the stuff I listen to is not from the queue, but from feeds that iTunes is directly subscribed to)
