Blog Conversation Syndication
In the spirit of
ThreadsML, I have decided to syndicate the conversations on my blog. Each entry now has its own RSS feed that contains the orignal blog entry and all of the replies in the conversation. The file name for each feed is the same as the file name of the entry, with an ".rdf" extension rather than a ".html" extension. Each entry is also setup for RSS autodiscovery, so your favourite aggregator with find the feed automatically. Why would I want to do this? There are a number of reasons, but the first one simple: to help keep track of conversations. How many times have you posted a comment on a blog entry and forgot to return to that entry to see if there were any replies or follow-up comments? It can be hard to keep track of all the comments you make. Now, if you make a comment on one of the entries in this blog, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for that conversation. You can then setup your aggregator to monitor the feed for replies. I have created a "conversations" folder in my aggregator for this purpose. I created the RSS feed using a custom Movable Type template -- if you use MT and you want to syndicate your conversations, let me know.
