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How does that email exchange go? I occasionally see something like that I'd like to get addressed (Substack is the big one, I wish they supported paid RSS) but

How does that email exchange go? I occasionally see something like that I'd like to get addressed (Substack is the big one, I wish they supported paid RSS) but I've always assumed that even if I send an email, no one will care. Who did you contact? And how? And what was their response?

tomjakubowski 3y ago
> I've always assumed that even if I send an email, no one will care. I used to feel this way too -- why would such and such bigwig writer care about what I have to say? - and then I started sending the emails. More responses, and thoughtful ones too, than I ever imagined. I suggest just trying it. Find a few company contacts on their website or trawl LinkedIn. As long as you're polite, what's the worst that could happen?
superkuh 3y ago
Below is how it started after using the member form and getting shunted to a rep. They literally didn't know that most RSS readers are actually applications run on your home computer. They thought Feedly was a "traditional" feed reader and not some weird corporate service. The ignorance was disheartening to say the least. >I wanted to follow up on your inquiry regarding RSS readers being blocked on science.org. We allow most traditional RSS readers (like Feedly) but this one in particular (QuiteRSS) we do not support. It behaves differently than most readers by using a browser to scrape content similar to a bot. We encourage you to try another RSS feed reader. But I kept it up, and most importantly, I emailed the author of the blog who's feed was being blocked by bad cloudflare config: Derek Lowe of "In the Pipeline". I'm sure that he also contacted science.org/AAAS and it was his input that kept them listening to me and trying to fix it. After a handful more emails of me showing them how their config was broken and explaining what RSS was and that it is meant for "bots" (to them: everything not megacorp browsers) they passed it to the correct people who put in an exception to the blocking for the feed URLs. I wish I would've asked them to unblock the HTML blog pages too. :\

tomjakubowski 3y ago

> I've always assumed that even if I send an email, no one will care. I used to feel this way too -- why would such and such bigwig writer care about what I have to say? - and then I started sending the emails. More responses, and thoughtful ones too, than I ever imagined. I suggest just trying it. Find a few company contacts on their website or trawl LinkedIn. As long as you're polite, what's the worst that could happen?

superkuh 3y ago

Below is how it started after using the member form and getting shunted to a rep. They literally didn't know that most RSS readers are actually applications run on your home computer. They thought Feedly was a "traditional" feed reader and not some weird corporate service. The ignorance was disheartening to say the least. >I wanted to follow up on your inquiry regarding RSS readers being blocked on science.org. We allow most traditional RSS readers (like Feedly) but this one in particular (QuiteRSS) we do not support. It behaves differently than most readers by using a browser to scrape content similar to a bot. We encourage you to try another RSS feed reader. But I kept it up, and most importantly, I emailed the author of the blog who's feed was being blocked by bad cloudflare config: Derek Lowe of "In the Pipeline". I'm sure that he also contacted science.org/AAAS and it was his input that kept them listening to me and trying to fix it. After a handful more emails of me showing them how their config was broken and explaining what RSS was and that it is meant for "bots" (to them: everything not megacorp browsers) they passed it to the correct people who put in an exception to the blocking for the feed URLs. I wish I would've asked them to unblock the HTML blog pages too. :\