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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David Whelan

@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.