And then what happened???

November 27, 2007 9:31 AM

Google Reader truncates posts for some feeds. Presumably this is me being dim.

Google Reader is the only blog feed thing I can even remotely understand, but I'm having an issue with it.

Some feeds will show up perfectly, the whole post is right there in the reader. Great! (Example: Danger Room.)

Some feeds will show up as just the post headline, and I have to visit the actual blog to read the post. (Example: Late Show Writers On Strike.)

Some feeds, Google Reader will truncate: it'll show the headline and the first few paragraphs, but then it'll trail off in mid-sentence. (Example: Wee Wonderfuls.)

Is there a way to fix this? I'd like the Reader to show the whole posts of feeds I subscribe to.

I don't think I have any options set differently for the truncated feeds, but maybe I'm looking in the wrong place. Also: at first I thought that the ones that truncated oddly were all from a specific blogging service, but they're not.

Any ideas?

posted by thehmsbeagle to computers & internet (8 comments total)

Oh, it's up the individual blog's settings if they send out full text or just the first however-many-words. So the variation isn't under your control, and isn't anything you're doing wrong.

Blogs have various reasons for wanting your to click through, from "more chance for you to see the ads that pay for me to do this" to RSS-republishing, which breaks the original writer's copyright.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:37 AM on November 27, 2007

I know that if they are using wordpress, there is a setting that controls whether you see a snippet or the whole thing, and if they use the "more" tag at all, it apparently requires you to go to the site to read the post. My blog is wordpress, but I am not an expert.
posted by Medieval Maven at 9:38 AM on November 27, 2007

Lots of blogs don't publish full articles in the RSS/Atom feeds in order to drive you to the site to read the full entry, so it's the feeds you're using, rather then the reader.

Some feeds to give the choice though, but I don't know how to make Google Reader opt for one over another.
posted by paulfreeman at 9:41 AM on November 27, 2007

What everyone else said. About the only thing you can do is send the individual blogger an email asking for full text feeds.

Some of them are going to say "No, come read my ads!" but some might not even have thought about it before.

I don't really read "partial text" or "headline only" feeds any more, though.
posted by toomuchpete at 9:50 AM on November 27, 2007

Full Text RSS will allow you to route around some partial feeds and get the full feed instead.
posted by Mo Nickels at 9:55 AM on November 27, 2007 [2 favorites]

Well, in fairness to the blogger, though, it sincerely is not always about the ads.

If you send out full text feeds, a really depressing number of people seem to think this means "here are my words; by all means, please feel free to republish them in their entirety. The faster the better!"

We used to send out full feeds, but we'd find our entries republished on other sites, as if they were that site's original content (no links, no attribution) within minutes, thanks to the magic of RSS voodoo.

The DMCA takedown notices would have been a full time job, so we trimmed our feeds.
posted by DarlingBri at 9:56 AM on November 27, 2007

I didn't know any of these things! I'm totally willing to look at peoples' ads (or pretend to look at them, anyway) and wouldn't steal their info: I just forget to check blogs for updates.

Thanks, everyone!
posted by thehmsbeagle at 9:59 AM on November 27, 2007

DarlingBri: "We used to send out full feeds, but we'd find our entries republished on other sites, as if they were that site's original content (no links, no attribution) within minutes, thanks to the magic of RSS voodoo.

The DMCA takedown notices would have been a full time job, so we trimmed our feeds."

You may find the Antileech plugin useful. You can give specific sites(i.e. the splogs) a different feed from everyone else. Use your imagination, or just let it automatically send them garbage.

There's also a plugin to put out a full text feed despite using the more tag.
posted by Mr. Gunn at 4:25 PM on November 27, 2007