GoogleReader sez that's last week's news. You cannot haz last week's news.
May 28, 2009 11:37 PM   Subscribe

So frustrated... For the past two months my GoogleReader has been making my unread items expire (i.e., not show up in the "new items" feed view) in far less than the standard 30 days. Right now I've got things about 10 days old, at one point it was down to three or four days. Why? And how the heck can I fix this? Old news is still good news!

Setup details -- I'm on Windows XP, Firefox 3.0.10, using Lifehacker's Better GReader usually in the minimalistic view. I have several other add-ons installed, like greasemonkey and noscript, but I don't think any of them should be affecting GoogleReader. I'll give a full listing if someone thinks it's important. [FWIW, the expired feed items don't magically reappear if I switch over to IE or my iPhone's mobile version.]

My understanding from the forum searching I've done is that GoogleReader doesn't allow users to specify when their feed items expire but sets everything to a standard 30-day newness. But I have far too many feeds for my own good, and frequently leave things unread to check back on for days or weeks at a time. (like... hey that's a cool askme question, I'll go back and see what other people said in a few days.) That's usually fine, as I mark the uninteresting items as read, keep the interesting ones unread, and then go back to them later.

But! A couple months ago my feed items started "expiring" far far sooner - as soon as three or four days in some cases. When I have my view set to "new items" they don't show up at all. If I put the view to "all items" and scroll down to force-load additional items, the older ones show up, still unread, just not considered "new" anymore. Frustrating as all hell, because I also have to scroll past all my read items to find them, and keep switching between "all" and "new" views. Ugh!

Does anyone know if there was a change in GoogleReader's settings on expiration of new items? Or is there something gone wonky in Firefox? Or are the RSS gods displeased with me? I know I have a ton of feeds but I don't think I'm anywhere near the upper limit of allowed subscriptions. I've been tearing my hair out looking at the settings and looking at forums but I'm only getting people bitching about the standard 30-day expiration.

Help!!
posted by ahimsa to Computers & Internet (4 answers total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
Google Reader's "Keep Unread" is notoriously unreliable. Maybe you could star the items instead (you can just hit the "s" key) or add them to Instapaper?
posted by ckolderup at 4:59 AM on May 29, 2009


What I've started doing is tagging them with a 'Keep Me' tag, and possibly starring them
posted by deezil at 5:03 AM on May 29, 2009


> hey that's a cool askme question, I'll go back and see what other people said in a few days

This is what starring is for.
posted by cj_ at 1:45 PM on May 29, 2009


Response by poster: Thanks for the responses so far...

I do use the "star" function as well, but my habit was not to look at the "starred items" view to find them (all mixed up from the different categories of feeds) but rather to make the "kept-unread" items stand out when I scroll through my folders of feeds.

Re: Instapaper... I also installed Read it Later and have been trying to use that, but I'm having trouble remembering to look at a second list of items rather than having everything in one place in GReader. *sigh*

I was just hoping there was a tweak to make GoogleReader go back to the usual 30day expiration so that I have a fighting chance to keep up with my feeds...
posted by ahimsa at 2:21 PM on May 29, 2009


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