Full feeds versus partial feeds

Lots of folks out there take a hard line when it comes to publishing either full feeds (the entire contents of each post being published in RSS/Atom) or partial feeds.

Scoble, for example, is famous for declaring he won’t subscribe to anyone’s partial feed.

Shelley and Rafe have posted thoughtful takes on this, from either side of the fence.

My take? Well I publish a full feed. But for the longest time I didn’t. It hasn’t made a difference as far as my readership is concerned one way, or another, because this is such a personal space for me.

‘There is more than one way to do it’ should not only be the motto of Perl, but the motto of the web. There is room for both approaches – and many more. We’ve mostly gotten each other speaking the same language (hey I know that’s arguable), but to argue that there is only ‘one true way’ to publish the sentences misses the beauty of the web.

One thought on “Full feeds versus partial feeds

  1. I agree – both my personal site and KP publish full feeds. Perhaps it results in less hits.

    You and I ended up conversing about this on Saturday. Unless you’re one of the 6-15 sites people visit every day, you should publish a full feed to get your content out there.

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