New Titles for RSS?

September 27, 2005 11:26 AM

Metafilter RSS feed - instead of taking the HTML page title and therefore producing rather weird RSS feed titles (see here), how about a new field when people add an FPP that allows the poster to clearly state in a few words concisely what the post is about and use that as an RSS title - then I can see the latest MeFi posts from Google and know exactly what they're about instead of having to guess.
posted by FieldingGoodney to Feature Requests at 11:26 AM (10 comments total)

Alternatively I guess we could all start using descriptive titles. It is what they're for, after all.
posted by nthdegx at 1:03 PM on September 27, 2005

how about a new field when people add an FPP that allows the poster to clearly state in a few words concisely what the post is about and use that as an RSS title

I do exactly that, it's called the title field on the posting page, and it is described as being for page titles and RSS titles. What you are asking for here is that everyone be more conscise and descriptive, which is one of those things that's really hard to do.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:07 PM on September 27, 2005

Since people still haven't been able to grasp the concept of tags, I'm not so sure adding another entry field would be useful at all.

But I admit that I'm guilty of not making my page titles as useful as they could be in helping to describe the post's comments. But at least I use the tags.
posted by fenriq at 1:32 PM on September 27, 2005

But I admit that I'm guilty of not making my page titles as useful as they could be in helping to describe the post's comments

Me too. In fact I'm responsible for one of the ones in the linked image. The thing is on a site which has as ridiculous an amount of pages as MetaFilter does; page titles were never going to be as useful as they would have been on say, a relatively small homepage; so it was easy for this to be used as a place to add a joke, wry commentry or subtle reference.

Then RSS came along and suddnely page titles have a whole new lease of life; or at least should have, had the afore-mentioned title field behaviour not become ingrained.

So for the sake of all the MetaFilter RSS readers, perhaps we should all have a good think about making our page titles more useful.
posted by nthdegx at 1:51 PM on September 27, 2005

Actually nthdegx, I only added the page title in response to RSS users last year. They don't predate heavy RSS use.

They work better at Ask Mefi because the posting page is much more clear about how the title is used. I just revisited the mefi posting page and it doesn't even mention RSS, which will be fixed.
posted by mathowie (staff) at 1:55 PM on September 27, 2005

Actually nthdegx, I only added the page title in response to RSS users last year. They don't predate heavy RSS use.

Crikey -- well I'd bet on your MetaFilter memory being clearer than mine but I could have sworn that wasn't the case. Perhaps RSS support has been about longer than I'd thought; or my active history is shorter than I'd supposed.
posted by nthdegx at 2:07 PM on September 27, 2005

They work better at Ask Mefi because the posting page is much more clear about how the title is used. I just revisited the mefi posting page and it doesn't even mention RSS, which will be fixed.

Cheers Matt - I think a lot of posters see the title almost as an opportunity to add a humourous strapline to the FPP - all in the spirit of MeFi - but not much use when reading the MeFi "headlines" from another website (hopefully that will be resolved now you've notified them - thanks again!).
posted by FieldingGoodney at 2:15 PM on September 27, 2005

No, no, no, no, no. The HTML page titles are awesome. You should add a new field for RSS titles. Then, once the dirty communist comedians pervert that field to their own means, add another. Eventually, there will be so many fields that those (call this hyperbole if you must) terrorists will be forced to write something serious in one of them. Victory!
posted by Plutor at 2:58 PM on September 27, 2005

The first MeFi post with a title: November 12, 2002. Although AskMe didn't have titles for a long time after that, so I'm sure that's what Matt is thinking of.
posted by smackfu at 3:20 PM on September 27, 2005

Well, I'm guilty too. Had never considered how the titles might look in an RSS reader (and I've just posted something on AskMe, which means I've most likely skimmed over something important). What exactly does it say on AskMe about the title field?
posted by Tuwa at 3:20 PM on September 27, 2005