Mastodawn

Many people around me here on fedi seem to enjoy #RSS readers. I tried adding an RSS extension to my browser long ago, probably 15 years ago, but it didn't fit. After some time it lay idle, with unread counters raising higher and higher, I removed it. I didn't think of it much, but lately I'm more exposed to people liking RSS, I felt both the curiousity to try again, and some undefined aversion from the past.
I wasn't sure what it is, until I read @tg describing the philosophy behind #Current

Ur Ya'ar 2d ago

@tg :
> Every RSS reader I've used presents your feeds as a list to be processed. Items arrive. They're marked unread. Your job is to get that number to zero, or at least closer to zero than it was yesterday.

This resonated with me strongly. I don't want another inbox where I feel I have to read everything, or feel "guilty" leaving things unread. I love Terry's approach to this.
https://www.terrygodier.com/current

->

Current

An RSS reader that doesn't count. What happens when you stop treating your feeds like an inbox and start treating them like a river.

Terry Godier

Ur Ya'ar 2d ago

I also love the idea of different content passing by at different paces. As Terry puts it:

> This solves a problem that has haunted every chronological feed since Google Reader: a single prolific source drowning out everything else.

Thus is something I've been struggling with on #Mastodon. People that post a lot drown others. I often miss posts by people that I want not to miss. Currently I tey solving it using Lists, but other solutions might be nice as well.

->

Ur Ya'ar 2d ago

I'd love to hear your thoughts. Do you like RSS readers? Which ones? Do you feel the same way about unread counters? Do you have tips on enjoying better content without FOMO or guilt that you haven't read it all?

S.T. Veje 2d ago

@yaarur I make liberal use of “mark all read” and feel no guilt. Just like I don’t feel any guilt about not reading every post here or every article on a news site. I’ll read the ones that catch my attention and scroll past the rest.

@yaarur RSS readers have been part of my daily life for 25 years. Currently self-hosting Fresh-RSS.

I like unread counters. I curate my feeds to keep the read counts sane. People think they need to follow 1000s of people on social media, subscribe to 1000s of RSS feeds and 100s of mailing lists. Rather than worrying about all the unread stuff, I just curate it at the source. Why would I subscribe to 1000s of feeds if I'm only going to get to some small percent of them?

@yaarur Current is interesting but not for me. I subscribe to a feed because I want to see the things in it. Not have them be removed for me by an algorithm. A lot of articles I just glance at and move on. They get marked as read. If I find myself not reading articles from a particular feed too often, I retire that feed. I go through phases of adding and culling to make sure things stay fresh. Not because I have to, but because I like to.

David Whelan 2d ago

@yaarur I love RSS. I use FreshRSS because I like having something web-based. I don't use unread counters. As you describe, I like just opening the list of posts, however many, and scroll through. But I have slowly replaced all of my other news sources (Google News, Flipboard) with RSS, which gives me an incentive to read it regularly. I also keep an RSS feed finder extension in my browser to highlight sites with feeds. And, like any news tool, I regularly weed out feeds if they're going unread.

Alexandra 2d ago

@yaarur I gave up on RSS Readers kinda. They stress me too much because of the number of posts

Using a reading list based system right now. I fed some high frequency feeds into a process. It picks out 20 Posts I might like to read. Need to work on the feedback mechanism, but i like what i discovered with it. Not too much but enough to get me informed

Taha Ahmed 2d ago

@yaarur Fraidycat is very suitable for the usage you described. Use it everyday, and also Nextcloud News and TinyTinyRSS.

Lupo 🌻2d ago

> Do you like RSS readers?

I suffer from feed addiction 🙂
Currently I have subscribed 256 feeds ...

> Which ones?

Common web based:

* TinyTinyRSS (PHP)
* FreshRSS (PHP)
* Miniflux (Single executable)

Android apps:

* Countless ...

Of course I recommend FOSS ones 🙂
Go to https://f-droid.org/ and search for the terms "RSS" and "reader".

Quite a few of the apps can access web based readers / aggregators like the ones mentioned above.

#RSS
#FeedAddiction

F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository

F-Droid is the app distribution ecosystem for Android where your user freedom comes first. Discover our app store, explore the world of free and open source (FOSS) apps and [learn](https://f-droid.org/about/) about our app distribution tools.

@yaarur Unlike most responders, I prefer non-web-based reader. My favorite for many years is Akregator which is part of my KDE desktop.

I organize all feeds in folders, representing wide categories - e.g: news, software (with sub categories) etc.

As a result, I can quickly mark-as-read complete high volume categories (who cares about old news?)

At the same time, other feeds or categories are handled with care -- skimming quickly until counters are zero.

Korrespondent zur See 1d ago

@yaarur @CiaraNi There is no FOMO in today’s endless rain of information. RSS (#NetNewsWire and a #FreshRSS server for me) help me to maintain what is interesting and is mostly filled with content I am interested in. My Mastodon Bookmarks even end up in a feed there automatically. But than: Everything unread gets auto deleted after 14 days, unless it is starred. And when starred the content is automatically piped into a draft post to my #Mixpost instance to be reshared.

Korrespondent zur See 1d ago

@yaarur @CiaraNi But that said, I am maybe not the “work it to zero” guy, currently having about 6k of unread e-mails.

@Hinnerk @yaarur 🙂

Lupo 🌻2d ago

> feel "guilty" leaving things unread

AFAIK for feed readers / feed aggregators it is common to have an option that determines an age at which entries are automatically deleted / no longer displayed.

Bodhipaksa 2d ago

@yaarur I've been using Reeder for maybe a year now. There is no unread count, which makes it a more relaxing experience. The articles are just there, in a list, and I can read them or not.