Line breaks in AskMe RSS

October 14, 2007 6:49 PM

Why is there no line break before the (more inside) part in AskMe RSS?

First of all, sorry if this is inappropriate or has already been discussed. Tried a search, but couldn't find a discussion of this exact topic.

I'm wondering if there's a particular reason why there can't be a line break between the front-page part of the question and the (more inside) part in the RSS feed for Ask Metafilter. Seems this would make the questions much more readable in something like Google Reader and would be trivial to insert (just a couple of -br-s like between paragraphs of the body text would do the trick).

By the way, I read this post already and believe I understand it, but it's not quite what I'm asking. I see why you'd ignore the line breaks the user puts in themselves for the front page part, but why not have the site put in just one as a separator between the front page part and the (more inside) in the RSS?

posted by dixie flatline to feature requests at 6:49 PM (9 comments total)

It had whitespace, but not actual br tags, which it does now. Formatting should improve in google reader the next time everything updates.
posted by mathowie at 6:56 PM on October 14, 2007

Thanks very much. Just saw the first new post and it looks a lot better.
posted by dixie flatline at 7:07 PM on October 14, 2007

Darn. I considered this a feature not a bug. It made it so that when posters were too vague with their non-MI part it almost resembled a properly composed post.
posted by Rhomboid at 8:33 PM on October 14, 2007

Much more often it just makes it hard to read. There's a definite shift in tone between the summary part and the MI even in a well-written post. And then you have the people that try to make a play on the (more inside) tag, so it looks something like:

"Should I stop smoking crack? Much Anyway, the reason I started smoking crack is ..."
posted by dixie flatline at 9:12 PM on October 14, 2007

Yes, and whenever a dimwit does that annoying thing a helpful admin usually removes it soon after.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:47 PM on October 14, 2007

True, but I always seem to be seeing the original in the RSS. Not sure if that's because Google Reader doesn't pull updates, or just that I'm usually reading the newest posts first.
posted by dixie flatline at 1:39 AM on October 15, 2007

The other day I saw an anonymous poster do the dimwit thing. I was kinda surprised it wasn't edited out immediately.
posted by grouse at 1:57 AM on October 15, 2007

There's no line in preview on askme either, even though there is one on the blue (and, on preview, the gray also).

About those MI jokes: I've found that they don't always edit out every single one of them. At least there are fewer now then before.
posted by philomathoholic at 3:29 AM on October 15, 2007

Refer to extended explanation, this one is a dizzle. [more inside]
posted by smackfu at 5:41 AM on October 15, 2007