4 ms·

I moved over to newsblur after the reader news. One of the main features was that it was open source so what happened with reader wouldn't happen again, I could

by pedrocr 13y ago

I moved over to newsblur after the reader news. One of the main features was that it was open source so what happened with reader wouldn't happen again, I could always self-host. After seeing how easy it is to move from one service to another I'm not so sure. Right now I'm a frustrated customer. All the effort seems to be going into flashy features and redesign while the actual function of a rss reader is not there yet. The basic feed stream doesn't work properly and never has. Items show back randomly after I've already read them and the infinite scroll doesn't work reliably. Bugs about this go ignored. I'll be trying feedbin.me next as I saw several recommendations on hacker news today and it seems to be a no fuss back-to-basics feed reader.

conesus 13y ago
Support is handled every single day and I take these kinds of bugs very seriously. You should email me your username if you are experiencing this issue. Neither my error graphs nor my support forum show issues like unreliable infinite scroll or random stories. Please email me your info so I can get it fixed. I want everybody to have as positive an experience on NewsBlur as I do.
- pedrocr 13y ago
  I use the same username here as in newsblur. Here's the bug I submitted: https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/feed_doesnt_load_new_items_after_the_initial_load_on_access https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/feed_doesnt_load... It got one reply by "Stuart" a month ago asking me if I was a premium member, which I am. All other activity was by me. Here's the bug about read items coming back: https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/items_not_staying_marked_as_read https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/items_not_stayin... 75 people have marked it as affecting them, it has had 72 replies so far after being opened 2 months ago. Today's upgrade had a bunch of people complaining again with no reply. From what I gather the frontend don't retry the call to mark an item as read when it fails the first time so any problem contacting the backend results in items not being read. Today I had to mark some posts as read 5 or more times. I may end up using another feed reader anyway since I don't need or want all the newsblur features. That being said getting the "infinite scroll of unread posts" feature right should be a top priority for a feed reader and so far it hasn't been.
  - conesus 13y ago
    The unread issue was fixed 2 months ago. The most recent bug only lasted for 30 minutes and was the result of one of my app servers being down and HAProxy just kept serving requests to it. In other words, 1 out of every 12 requests would fail. Ugh. But that was resolved 7 hours ago, and it seems your bug is more recent.
    - joshschreuder 13y ago
      I just emailed you re: unread showing up again. I don't think it's happened to me since the redesign, but has definitely happened in the last 2 months.
- Livven 13y ago
  Maybe the issue with infinite scrolling is the same I've previously reported, about stories from another folder showing up when rapidly switching between folders and then loading more stories (which I originally mistakenly assumed to be caused by waiting for some time before loading the next page; maybe you remember our Twitter convo).
chalst 13y ago
I rejected Newsblur when I was looking for a successor because I found no privacy policy for them (as in, a statement of what they do with the data they gather, not a blog post advertising what visibility controls they offer users). This is simply unacceptable for a web-hosted feed reader. In the end, I went for the Slick RSS feed reader, which is a local-state Chrome extension. Simple, no support for sharing between machines, no folders, but it is well-designed and reliable. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/slick-rss/ealjoljnibpdkocmldliaoojpgdkcdob https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/slick-rss/ealjoljn...

by pedrocr 13y ago

conesus 13y ago

Support is handled every single day and I take these kinds of bugs very seriously. You should email me your username if you are experiencing this issue. Neither my error graphs nor my support forum show issues like unreliable infinite scroll or random stories. Please email me your info so I can get it fixed. I want everybody to have as positive an experience on NewsBlur as I do.

pedrocr 13y ago
I use the same username here as in newsblur. Here's the bug I submitted: https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/feed_doesnt_load_new_items_after_the_initial_load_on_access https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/feed_doesnt_load... It got one reply by "Stuart" a month ago asking me if I was a premium member, which I am. All other activity was by me. Here's the bug about read items coming back: https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/items_not_staying_marked_as_read https://getsatisfaction.com/newsblur/topics/items_not_stayin... 75 people have marked it as affecting them, it has had 72 replies so far after being opened 2 months ago. Today's upgrade had a bunch of people complaining again with no reply. From what I gather the frontend don't retry the call to mark an item as read when it fails the first time so any problem contacting the backend results in items not being read. Today I had to mark some posts as read 5 or more times. I may end up using another feed reader anyway since I don't need or want all the newsblur features. That being said getting the "infinite scroll of unread posts" feature right should be a top priority for a feed reader and so far it hasn't been.
- conesus 13y ago
  The unread issue was fixed 2 months ago. The most recent bug only lasted for 30 minutes and was the result of one of my app servers being down and HAProxy just kept serving requests to it. In other words, 1 out of every 12 requests would fail. Ugh. But that was resolved 7 hours ago, and it seems your bug is more recent.
  - joshschreuder 13y ago
    I just emailed you re: unread showing up again. I don't think it's happened to me since the redesign, but has definitely happened in the last 2 months.
Livven 13y ago
Maybe the issue with infinite scrolling is the same I've previously reported, about stories from another folder showing up when rapidly switching between folders and then loading more stories (which I originally mistakenly assumed to be caused by waiting for some time before loading the next page; maybe you remember our Twitter convo).

chalst 13y ago

I rejected Newsblur when I was looking for a successor because I found no privacy policy for them (as in, a statement of what they do with the data they gather, not a blog post advertising what visibility controls they offer users). This is simply unacceptable for a web-hosted feed reader. In the end, I went for the Slick RSS feed reader, which is a local-state Chrome extension. Simple, no support for sharing between machines, no folders, but it is well-designed and reliable. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/slick-rss/ealjoljnibpdkocmldliaoojpgdkcdob https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/slick-rss/ealjoljn...