Title
Remove syndicated feeds that have had zero readers for six months
Short, concise description of the idea
In order to free up namespace and decrease the processing load on the LJ servers feeds that reach zero readers should be deleted if they remain at zero readers for six months.
Full description of the idea
According to the
list of top 1000 feeds the 1000th most popular syndicated account has only 57 readers. There might be hundreds, or even thousands, of feeds that have zero readers. Many of these feeds might even be broken, trying to draw content from blogs that no longer exist.
I propose that after a feed has had zero readers for six months (a totally made up length of time, but one that seems reasonable) that LJ delete the feed, freeing up the name for rename use and taking the burden of checking the feed off the server.
Since feed articles are deleted after two weeks, taking any comments with them, there shouldn't be any problems with people who commented on a feed article, nor with people who once linked to a specific article as it existed on the LJ feed.
Since there are no readers nobody will be taken by surprise by having a feed subscription turn into a friend relationship.
An ordered list of benefits
- Freeing of names - this will free up many names for use in renaming.
- Less effort for the LJ servers - from what I've been told even feeds with zero readers get checked once every 24 hours. Deleting the feed will free up some server resources.
An ordered list of problems/issues involved
- Possible confusion between old syndicated feed and renamed user account - It's possible that in the past somebody linked to the syndicated feed using an lj user tag, and after deletion and renaming that tag would then point to a regular user account.
- Deleting a feed will prevent free/plus users from adding it in the future - Since the ability to create feeds is unlimited for paid users it shouldn't be too difficult for a free/plus user to find someone who can create a new feed for them. Besides, I'd be willing to bet the entire contents of my LJ wallet that the majority of feeds with zero readers are either broken or are duplicates of other feeds that have readers.