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

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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

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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.

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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?

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bit101

@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?

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bit101 2d ago

@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.