RSS and short descriptions
I am going to release an optional “short-description” feature tonight that I hope everyone will use for posts longer than a sentence or two. (instead of the full post text appearing in the feed, only the short-description will appear)
While I understand Scott’s motivation (he needs traffic on his site to support revenue generation), I am in complete agreement with Brad, Brian, and others - don’t do this and take away the utility of aggregators for everyone. The news aggregator is what makes it possible for me to read so many people’s writing; without it, I’d only be able to read a few.
A possible compromise, I suppose, would be to expose both types of feeds - full descriptions, and excerpts, and let the feed consumer decide which feed he wants. Not sure it would help you, but people who have limited bandwidth might like it…