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I gave up on the idea of RSS on an e-reader because RSS is garbage on the vast majority of websites these days. Most of those that support it will only show you

I gave up on the idea of RSS on an e-reader because RSS is garbage on the vast majority of websites these days. Most of those that support it will only show you the headline and maybe the first paragraph before including a link to the full article. So you're then still opening the article in a web browser to view it--which then sends you back to the well-known "Experimental web browser on Kindle/Kobo/other e-Ink reader is crap" problem). There were only a handful of sites where I could do meaningful article reading within the RSS reader itself, and one of them (ArsTechnica) required paying a yearly membership fee for the personalized full-article RSS feed. It's far less convenient, but just running the articles through Pocket makes for a superior reading experience (particularly on the Kobo), since Pocket will extract and display only the readable text, and avoid the nightmare that is trying to display your average webpage on an e-Ink reader browser.

vorpalhex 6y ago
Why not feed your RSS reader into ArchiveBox (or Pocket if you prefer) then? Get the full source in your preferred format.
samatman 6y ago
I'm plenty annoyed about RSS becoming steadily more difficult to use. I have to run an extension in Firefox to get an RSS icon in the address bar, which is just sad. That said, I'm finding that for Substack, at least, RSS works just fine. You get the whole article, no fuss, and it works the way it should, it's just https://example.substack.com/feed https://example.substack.com/feed. I'm pleased to see Substack do most things right. I almost wonder if their pitch deck explicitly said "we will zig every time Medium zagged".
rtpg 6y ago
Guess it depends on the site cuz I have had pretty much excellent experiences overall using RSS on anything (the worst feeds are tech blogs with hand rolled software that end up messing up their RSS feeds every 3 months leading to full resyncs)
k1m 6y ago
> Most of those that support it will only show you the headline and maybe the first paragraph before including a link to the full article. If you'd like to turn partial feeds into full-text versions, the project I work on might help. Doesn't work on all feeds, but will work on many: http://ftr.fivefilters.org/ http://ftr.fivefilters.org/
- gnicholas 6y ago
  I'd be interested in connecting with you about fivefilters — is there a good way to get in touch?
  - k1m 6y ago
    Sent you an email.
- edp 6y ago
  Chming in to to say thank you for the tools you created for sending articles to the kindle. I recently became a patreon member to support your work.
  - k1m 6y ago
    Thank you! Glad you find them useful, and really appreciate the support.
- zigzaggy 6y ago
  Whoa thanks for posting this, I didn't know about your service. I've recently created a new info capture / database process and this tool will come in handy!
anigbrowl 6y ago
Most of those that support it will only show you the headline and maybe the first paragraph A huge annoyance for me too. It's infuriating to me that marketing people are continually breaking things like RSS. It's unfortunate that there's no way for users to give negative feedback to people who abuse a protocol and render it less useful to everyone, which is worse than not adopting it at all.
3r8riacz 6y ago
Miniflux can unwrap the feed articles by grabbing the page source from the item links. It's a life saver https://miniflux.app/ https://miniflux.app/
varispeed 6y ago
I think this is because people mostly read a headline and a conclusion of a story and if all of it is contained in the feed, then they have no reason to go to the site. That means RSS is crippling the Ad revenue and makes the site unsustainable.
yakubin 6y ago
A lot of commercial sites do it because of lost ad revenue. Some of them, like Ars Technica, give you full-text RSS feeds, if you subscribe to them. I think that's fair. There are some non-commercial blogs with no ads, nothing but text on them, but still giving you only the title in the RSS feeds. I suspect it's the default configuration of whatever software they're using for the blogs, and they may not even be aware that RSS is a thing. Maybe I should start writing mails to them to inquire why that is and maybe change their minds on that, since I really can't see a reason for it. FWIW Most of the feeds I subscribe to are full-text.
lloydatkinson 6y ago
I agree - one of my goals for my new personal site I’m building is to be able to see a whole article in an RSS app.
volongoto 6y ago
I don,t have any experience with RSS on eInk, but I would rather that my RSS only contains only the title and the "pitch"(very short summary of the article, or the first paragraph). If I'm interested, with a single keyboard shortcut, my RSS reader fetches the article text for me, so I still don't have to visit the site and read the whole article from within the reader. I use InoReader, but I know NewsBlur (and probably others) has the same (fetch article text) functionality.

vorpalhex 6y ago

Why not feed your RSS reader into ArchiveBox (or Pocket if you prefer) then? Get the full source in your preferred format.

samatman 6y ago

I'm plenty annoyed about RSS becoming steadily more difficult to use. I have to run an extension in Firefox to get an RSS icon in the address bar, which is just sad. That said, I'm finding that for Substack, at least, RSS works just fine. You get the whole article, no fuss, and it works the way it should, it's just https://example.substack.com/feed https://example.substack.com/feed. I'm pleased to see Substack do most things right. I almost wonder if their pitch deck explicitly said "we will zig every time Medium zagged".

rtpg 6y ago

Guess it depends on the site cuz I have had pretty much excellent experiences overall using RSS on anything (the worst feeds are tech blogs with hand rolled software that end up messing up their RSS feeds every 3 months leading to full resyncs)

k1m 6y ago

> Most of those that support it will only show you the headline and maybe the first paragraph before including a link to the full article. If you'd like to turn partial feeds into full-text versions, the project I work on might help. Doesn't work on all feeds, but will work on many: http://ftr.fivefilters.org/ http://ftr.fivefilters.org/

gnicholas 6y ago
I'd be interested in connecting with you about fivefilters — is there a good way to get in touch?
- k1m 6y ago
  Sent you an email.
edp 6y ago
Chming in to to say thank you for the tools you created for sending articles to the kindle. I recently became a patreon member to support your work.
- k1m 6y ago
  Thank you! Glad you find them useful, and really appreciate the support.
zigzaggy 6y ago
Whoa thanks for posting this, I didn't know about your service. I've recently created a new info capture / database process and this tool will come in handy!

anigbrowl 6y ago

Most of those that support it will only show you the headline and maybe the first paragraph A huge annoyance for me too. It's infuriating to me that marketing people are continually breaking things like RSS. It's unfortunate that there's no way for users to give negative feedback to people who abuse a protocol and render it less useful to everyone, which is worse than not adopting it at all.

3r8riacz 6y ago

Miniflux can unwrap the feed articles by grabbing the page source from the item links. It's a life saver https://miniflux.app/ https://miniflux.app/

varispeed 6y ago

I think this is because people mostly read a headline and a conclusion of a story and if all of it is contained in the feed, then they have no reason to go to the site. That means RSS is crippling the Ad revenue and makes the site unsustainable.

yakubin 6y ago

A lot of commercial sites do it because of lost ad revenue. Some of them, like Ars Technica, give you full-text RSS feeds, if you subscribe to them. I think that's fair. There are some non-commercial blogs with no ads, nothing but text on them, but still giving you only the title in the RSS feeds. I suspect it's the default configuration of whatever software they're using for the blogs, and they may not even be aware that RSS is a thing. Maybe I should start writing mails to them to inquire why that is and maybe change their minds on that, since I really can't see a reason for it. FWIW Most of the feeds I subscribe to are full-text.

lloydatkinson 6y ago

I agree - one of my goals for my new personal site I’m building is to be able to see a whole article in an RSS app.

volongoto 6y ago

I don,t have any experience with RSS on eInk, but I would rather that my RSS only contains only the title and the "pitch"(very short summary of the article, or the first paragraph). If I'm interested, with a single keyboard shortcut, my RSS reader fetches the article text for me, so I still don't have to visit the site and read the whole article from within the reader. I use InoReader, but I know NewsBlur (and probably others) has the same (fetch article text) functionality.