Who will think of the children?!

Please, if you are one of the millions of unthinking lemmings who insist on a daily ‘daily links’ post ((
This, of course, should not be confused with ’shorts’ or ‘asides’
- i.e. concise entries with a single specific point, resource or topic.)), stop.

A number of the RSS feeds I read daily, have just been deleted out of my reader.. why? Because being bombarded every day with a universally badly formatted post, made up of frequently random del.icio.us or digg links that the author has quickly dredged up, instead of actual content, has become really fucking tiring.

If you like the idea of links, then consider the concept of an ‘aside’ or ’short’, where each of those links you’ve mass RSS bombed, forms a short one-or-two sentence post of it’s own. There are many different resources on how to implement an asides or shorts concept.

As each link forms a single entry - it’s easier to read, easier to find at a later date, will keep disparate topics separated.. and is environmentally friendly.

If you simply cannot let go of the horrendous habit of just having to share your daily digest of disparate links, all crushed into one entry, please do the world a favour and remove them from your primary RSS feed and provide a secondary feed for that purpose.

The world, will thank you for it.

≡ This is a journal entry relating to the topics of , .

Brendan Borlase is a Systems and Network Administrator living in Adelaide, Australia, having lived, worked and breathed Information Technology for over 12 years. Learn more.

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  1. Andy Z

    I more or less agree. However, there are a few people who do it right, such as Largehearted Boy with his daily Shorties post. I always look forward to that one.

  2. brendan

    Indeed - his “shorties” seem to be along the idea of one-post-per-item that does work really well, along with an associated ‘organised and harmonious’ feel..

    It’s the raw ‘link spam’ that I object to.

  3. Kyle

    I agree on some level as well. Most ‘daily link’ posts are a waste of time, because everybody posts the same links at the same time, wasting your precious minutes on identical endless fodder. There are some that I think are okay, such as Largehearted Boy like Andy said.