My petition for full RSS-feeds in euroblogs (updated)

I just wrote on Twitter that I "hate"* when blogs don't have full RSS-feeds, which in my case meant some of the many euroblogs I read. Let me explain why.

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Update (29 March): The European Parliament webeditors have reacted promptly and their blog that I used as an example below now has a full RSS-feed that you should follow here if you aren't following them already now.

They are impressing - and if you think you don't have time to follow so many blogs, just stop following this blog and follow them!

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First, for those not at all familiar with the subject of RSS, I recommend reading Jon Worth's post on why RSS is great.

Second, I should remind those who already have a clue what RSS is that you can either have a full RSS-feed, one that translates whole blog posts into RSS content, and partial RSS-feeds that just send the first lines or a special summary so that you have to click into the feed to read the full post on the original blog website.

Third, you can find a bunch of good arguments for and against full feeds on the web, but for me it kind of boils down to the question whether I want readers or visitors.

So here are my personal arguments:

I only read every third or fourth blog post from feeds that don't show the full article because I don't take the time to click on every article that might be interesting although with a full feed I would actually know whether it is interesting.

Blogs that have only partial RSS-feeds want appear to tell me where I should read their content, instead of leaving this decision to me which is can be a sign that they care more for stats than for content (Update: or it can be unintentional as Tayebot from the EP webeditors told on Twitter).

Take for example the blog of the EP-webeditors:

It is a blog with great posts written by great people, but I only read them about once a week because they don't provide me with a full feed. I get their partial feed every day, but I mostly don't click on the articles. Which means that they spend time writing good blog posts that I don't read although I would love to.

One could say that this doesn't matter because if it is about visitors I'd still come more often on their blog than I do when I am just a reader. But now, because I don't have a full feed, I am a just-slightly-more-frequent visitor but a much-less-frequent reader.

This means that I will comment less frequently, link their articles less frequently and promote them less frequently on bloggingportal.eu. I might also miss important information or interesting discussions that I don't anticipate from first lines (the ones I see in the partial feed) that didn't attract my attention (Update: like this wonderful article on Klaus Welle that I had almost missed hadn't I written this post).

And there is another important problem with partial RSS:

In full feeds I scroll though semi-interesting articles to see whether there are at least parts of the text that I find interesting or links to more interesting blog posts that I didn't read so far. I then might click on a link to these blog posts in the full feed, something I wouldn't have done in a partial feed.

So having only a partial feed reduces overall traffic to blogs that are linked in articles of these blogs because I will miss these links whenever I don't click on an article in a partial feed. So the interest to get more visitors to one's own blog or the usage of partial feeds for other reasons [update] reduces the chances of other blogs or websites to be noticed, which reduces the overall online conversation and readership.

So in short: Please use full RSS-feeds! and be happy to have frequent readers instead of hoping to just get some more visitors from time to time!

PS.: I have twice as many people who follow my feed than I have unique visitors.

* Please don't overestimate the formulation, that was more a spontanious formulation after I went through the fifth partial feed.