Question RSS: By Thread -- first post or most recent post?

K 1.5.12
J! 1.5.20

These are my feed settings:

Enable RSS feed: YES
Default RSS type: By thread
RSS History: 1 month

My feed is only showing one post per thread. However, it's updating with the most recent post whenever one is added to a thread. Is this the normal behavior?

In other words, instead of the feed containing only the first post of each thread (my expectation of the setting) it contains only the most recent.

To make sure what's happening I tested this by adding a post to the most recent thread in the feed and reloading the feed. The feed then showed only the third post of that thread (rather than only the second as it had prior).

I'm happy to list any differences between my config and the default but I'm not sure if any of that would affect how the feed displays (other than the above settings).

Thanks in advance!

rickobee wrote: K 1.5.12
J! 1.5.20

These are my feed settings:

Enable RSS feed: YES
Default RSS type: By thread
RSS History: 1 month

My feed is only showing one post per thread. However, it's updating with the most recent post whenever one is added to a thread. Is this the normal behavior?

Yes, this is entirely normal and expected behaviour for K 1.5. In fact, it makes perfectly reasonable sense to use RSS news feeds this way, to show the news, i.e. the most recent message(s) posted on your forum site.

If you want to show the most recent messages posted to your forum, irrespective of whatever thread/topic they were posted within, use the By post option. But that's not what you asked; you asked how to show the first post made in threads that were recently updated by something else posted to those thread/topic. There is no RSS setting in K 1.5 that will do that.

Thanks for the reply, sozzled.

sozzled wrote: In fact, it makes perfectly reasonable sense to use RSS news feeds this way, to show the news, i.e. the most recent message(s) posted on your forum site.

Yes, but I had thought that's what the "by post" option was for. Not only do you see the most recent post in a thread but you also see the previous posts as well.

My (mis)understanding of how the options worked (and what seems sensible to me) is this:

1. By thread = only the opening post of each thread (the equivalent of a blog feed that doesn't include the comments)
2. By post = each new post as it's posted

#1 minimizes the size of the feed but tells you what new threads are at the forum so you can go read more. #2 allows you to follow all threads post by post so you don't have to visit the forums to read more.

Instead, "By thread" replaces the previous post. That means if I check a feed daily I won't have any chance at following a discussion via RSS. All I'll see is the most recent post to any thread which will be out of context because the previous posts aren't in the feed. Who needs a feed full of posts like "I agree", "LOL" or "+1" (extreme examples)?

If "By thread" doesn't work as #1 above then I'm completely baffled as to how it's useful to anyone!

Looking at my previous post again I realize I should've added "with all due respect" to that last comment.

I'm surprised I haven't found more discussion on this subject (or perhaps I've missed it) but I'm really looking forward to whatever enhanced RSS options will be in 1.6!

I understand what you want (and why you want it) and I am confining my comments to K 1.5. From the moment we start discussing what is in (or is not in) K 1.6 the discussion will go off-topic. It's for those reasons that I made no mention of K 1.6 in my earlier reply.

I'm sorry for your misunderstanding about RSS feeds and we will have to do something about that - to correct the situation - by writing an article in the Wiki. Perhaps someone would like to start this?