Comments on: Line breaks in AskMe RSS

Line breaks in AskMe RSS

dixie flatline — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 18:49:15 -0800

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?

By: mathowie

mathowie — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 18:56:54 -0800

It had whitespace, but not actual br tags, which it does now. Formatting should improve in google reader the next time everything updates.

By: dixie flatline

dixie flatline — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 19:07:54 -0800

Thanks very much. Just saw the first new post and it looks a lot better.

By: Rhomboid

Rhomboid — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 20:33:34 -0800

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.

By: dixie flatline

dixie flatline — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 21:12:29 -0800

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 ..."

By: Rhomboid

Rhomboid — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 23:47:57 -0800

Yes, and whenever a dimwit does that annoying thing a helpful admin usually removes it soon after.

By: dixie flatline

dixie flatline — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:39:23 -0800

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.

By: grouse

grouse — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 01:57:24 -0800

The other day I saw an anonymous poster do the dimwit thing. I was kinda surprised it wasn't edited out immediately.

By: philomathoholic

philomathoholic — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 03:29:49 -0800

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.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 05:41:33 -0800

Refer to extended explanation, this one is a dizzle. [more inside]