Should RSS feeds be reviewed?
A while back we featured International Center for Media and the Public Agenda’s study: International News and Problems with the News Media’s RSS Feeds. And as the RSS feeds increase day per day and as means to aggregate them and repackaged them increase aside from the information overload problem is there a problem in the quality of information the feed carries?Is there a way to select the quality of each feed? What are the criteria that one can use to select a good feed? What is the standard that can be used to make sure that one has a quality feed that one can offer to subscribers?
The study focused on four areas of a web feed and these are (i) Reliability, (ii) inclusiveness, (iii) key info, and (iv) timeliness. The study further defines each criterion:
Reliability: Do RSS search results match website’s search results?
Inclusiveness: Does RSS offer non-staff & archived stories (if also come through website search)?
Key info: Does RSS give headline/summary, date, time, reporter?
Timeliness: Are RSS stories as timely as those from website search?
All criteria seem sound and in general can be applied to most types of RSS feeds - whether it be from news site or blogs. Two things though would seem to be points of contention. The first is whether a feed with full text is better over a feed with summary. There are arguments for both - (a) summaries are extremely useful if you have to sift through many articles while (b)full seem are preferred for blog entries. The second is authority of the feed. What are the signs that you can trust the information you find inside the feed. Questions and issues that have to be dealt with include who is the author? What is his reputation? What is the organization or corporation behind the feed? What is their reputation? These are things that might be considered when analyzing the authority of the feed.
Thus if we compile everything together we get the following criteria for evaluating a feed.
Reliability
Inclusiveness
Key Info
Timeliness
Authority
Ten points per criterion? Any other criterion that could be added? I am interested to know your thoughts on the matter?
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1 opinion for Should RSS feeds be reviewed?
Twan van Elk » Blog Archive » Criteria voor feedbeoordeling
Oct 7, 2007 at 7:15 am
[…] Op A Feed Is Born voegt men daar nog het element ‘Authority’ aan toe: Should RSS feeds be reviewed? […]
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