Opt out of RSS

[andrewducker]

Title
Opt out of RSS

Short, concise description of the idea
An option to opt out of RSS/ATOM and any other syndication method that LJ chooses in the future

Full description of the ideaSome people aren't happy at the fact that sites like bloglines can duplicate their journal. They don't realise that this is an effect of having an RSS feed of it, and

Comments

[decadence1]

I'm against this but it's WHY I'm against it that's important:

I think this is intrinsically BAD for LiveJournal. Take this quote:
The internal view painted about LiveJournal users was certainly true in the past but it's now changed. All accounts now have their own RSS feed so non-LJers can see into our world, and LJ users can create syndicated accounts for outside sites which then can be added to LJers' friends pages. This suggestion being implemented would set LiveJournal back in my opinion. While it technically could be re-enabled it's another option people won't know about

[andrewducker]

It's not referenced - the contents are exactly duplicated, elsewhere (sans formatting).

RSS

[decadence1]

Again ONLY if they're public (available to anyone around the globe with a web browser) and not backdated.

Disabling by default has no real benefit I can see (security through obscurity/cross your fingers & hope, rather than using security settings), will destroy their ability to search via the integrated Feedster tool and will (in my opinion) just make anybody who wants to create a blog jump though hoops to configure it to a point that other journalling/blogging sites all start at - my point that it's bad for LiveJournal.

:-(

[burr86]

six billion internet users? surely you're off by an order of magnitude or five? ;)

[decadence1]

Ok maybe slightly less. "But there are lots anyway". ;p

[asciident]

I don't disagree with your comment, but I find it hard to believe that there are 6.6 billion Internet users worldwide, given that the current world population is shy of 7 billion. Quite a lot of those people don't have electricity, much less computers and internet service.

[decadence1]

I'm so not a morning person. :)

I was wrong in my estimate there, it was from (poorly recollected) memory of a statistic I'd seen. I'd think 1 billion is probably more appropriate (according to Google).

[hfnuala]

I don't know who you're quoting above but you're making a huge assumption about why people want to have a livejournal. My livejournal isn't a blog. It's isn't my 'public face' and I don't care what non-lj people think of my journal. It isn't for them.

[decadence1]

Blog/journal is really just semantics. To-may-to ~ Tom-ah-to.

You have the option of making posts non-public if you have a problem with the two to five million LiveJournal account holders looking at them as well as the 1.x billion random Internet surfers who, frankly, can surf by (or even create an account) at any time if you choose not to use the security settings.

Your userinfo reads "Mostly friends only nowadays" so if that's correct your entries won't usually ever be "affected".

[hfnuala]

I didn't realise that having chosen to be friends only removes my right to have an opinion on this.

And I really don't think blog/journal is semantics. There's a big conceptual difference in how people think of their audience. Which includes the expectation that people will be reading this in somesort of lj mediated format.

[decadence1]

I didn't realise that having chosen to be friends only removes my right to have an opinion on this.

It doesn't. At all. It does show you are aware that public = public though.

To your second point I still disagree. The sheer breadth of the userbase and its demographics means there are definitely people who see themselves very much as bloggers here and people who just feel they have an online diary and... It's in danger of getting off-topic from the original suggestion into a sociology discussion there though and so it's not relevant.

I don't think that expectation you suggested is accurate Nuala; the unique mix of the userbase means while some people might think that (and so can use the security settings) some don't. In LiveJournal's unique mix of users lies a strength not a weakness and I feel throwing the baby out with the bathwater is likely here and I am against it.

[trbleclef]

My livejournal isn't a blog.

"LiveJournal is a simple-to-use (but extremely powerful and customizable) personal publishing ("blogging") tool, built on open source software."

[bridgetester]

So what is a blog, to you? How is a LiveJournal different?