HN Explorer

Requested change to the Hacker News RSS feed - items should link to the comments

26 points by AndrewDucker ↗ HN
Each item in the RSS feed links to the original article, with a link to the comments in the description.

This means that if I'm navigating the RSS feed through a reader using the keyboard then selecting "open item" takes me to the original item, not to the comments.

I'd suggest that the Hacker News comments add value to the links, and that the default should be to drive traffic to news.ycombinator, not to the third-party site.

24 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 50.5 ms ] thread
bittersweet
Eventhough I do not read HN through a RSS feed I'd have to agree with you. I have to say sometimes I enjoy reading the insightful comments more then the actual articles, and I can imagine a lot of HN users feel the same way.
[dead] behe
I'd prefer a way to add tags so I can exclude them from the feed. I'm simply not interested in reading about Ruby, Erlang or any of these obscure languages that have little relevance for me.
trickjarrett
I don't think that this should be a change to the core RSS feed, most likely the majority of the RSS subscribers have adopted to it in its current state.

However I do think an alternate RSS with this change is merited and would be highly beneficial.

coopr
Highly agree - let's have an "official" feed that links to the comments.
Nekd
I don't care about comments, I care about informations, so i disagree.
edw519
The comments are information, in many cases, better than the article. I submit a lot of articles here because I care about what you guys think as much as I care about what OP says.
maethorechannen
I completely disagree. For me, most of the value of the feed is the link to the original article. If I want to go to the HN comments, I can just click the comments link.

If you really want this feature, maybe you could use Yahoo pipes to modify the feed the way you want it, instead of everyone being forced to use the RSS feed the way you want it.

Davertron
This pipe should do what you want:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=PCOTX0JF3hGLHmu1d...

AndrewDucker
Cheers for that - got me started.

I did a better version, that formats it properly: http://pipes.yahoo.com/andrewducker/hackernews Let me know if there's anything I missed.

SecurityMatters
You missed something that works without javascript. I don't run it. Any suggestions? Other than running javascript, which is way too bad an idea, security wise.
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utx00
what about two feeds?
thorax
Yeah, there are lots of people who have the current feed as their daily interface to the entire site. It seems a little mean to break their daily routine. I'd prefer there just be another feed that takes you to the comments (which I would use, as well, because I like the idea).
hellweaver666
To me, I would rather read the comments here than on the sites themselves as they are usually more intelligent and insightful than the dross you get on other sites ;o)

Normally, I just scroll through clicking on both links as I go. I would love to be able to read a summary description in the RSS though to give me a better idea of whether to click or not...

meatbag
It would be nice if the Twitter accounts that broadcast an HN feed also linked to the comments. There's a lot of value in these discussions. I've learned a lot from just lurking here.
vivekamn
I agree. I usually choose to read an article based on the comments. Also most times, it the comments that are interesting.
raganwald
The only reason I submit my own posts are to read the comments here, so you have my support for having a feed with links to comments.
comster
The feed does link to the comments. Please don't be like digg/slashdot here.... its nice to get to the meat without the extra click thru.
mverwijs
-1

The main reason for me following the hacker news rss feed is because it links to quality news. I couldn't care less about the opinions.

ulvund
later
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alphahorse
not agree, you already have a "comments" link
arantius
If you use Google Reader and Greasemonkey:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/2346

Quick Links makes links _inside_ the articles keyboard accessible. A few extra keystrokes as compared to the main link, but another possible compromise.

(And personally, I want the links-to-the-articles as they are.)