Hi!

Just got an idea: how about setting up an RSS (RDF Site Summary) server for MRC? This enables the headlines to appear on any desktop using an RSS feed client! Slashdot.org and recently also the sourceforge.net projects provide this service. It's pretty nifty.

You're on IRC usually, so write a script that RSS's the MRC-bot output

An RSS script isn't the problem. It can be added easily. In the past we had contacts with several websites that wanted to feature our news on their sites. (Mostly emulation-related sites). There are two reasons we decided not to do this

The first is datatraffic and server load. The same problem probably occurs on RSS-based desktops. Imagine 100 people with such a desktop running the RSS script every 5 minutes (or worse). We already pay quite a lot to keep the site on-air as it is already

The second reason is that the MRC will not be unique anymore. We try to gather news from the internet and from several sources and write our own, small articles about it. There is only one place on the internet where you can find this much news on MSX, and that is the MRC. If we allow other sites to directly copy (and not base their articles on) news from the MRC, we lose a bit of that MRC-unique feeling. Why visit msx.org if you have the news on www.anotheremulationsite.com (kuch) already? Why visit msx.org if you have the news on your desktop already? Even when we decide only to pass through the news headers we lose a bit of that unique-ness.

Another bonus reason is that we are more than news. In 2002 our main focus was news and all the news. Now, we are still doing that, but we are also offering photoshoots, forums, links. Soon we will add multilinguality, a downloads section and... more. If you have 'just the news' on your desktop, will you still visit all the other aspects of our website? Or all the other MSX websites we are linking to in our links database and/or from our newsposts?

Our aim is to increase activity. I don't know if RSS will contribute to that.

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The second reason is that the MRC will not be unique anymore. We try to gather news from the internet and from several sources and write our own, small articles about it. There is only one place on the internet where you can find this much news on MSX, and that is the MRC. If we allow other sites to directly copy (and not base their articles on) news from the MRC, we lose a bit of that MRC-unique feeling. Why visit msx.org if you have the news on http://www.anotheremulationsite.com (kuch) already? Why visit msx.org if you have the news on your desktop already? Even when we decide only to pass through the news headers we lose a bit of that unique-ness.

I don't think other sites will take over the RSS headlines. But anyway, with slashdot it made me visit it even more: when I saw that a new headline (note: only headline! Not article!) appeared, I could click on it and it would bring me to the full item. I think this does increase visits!

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Another bonus reason is that we are more than news. In 2002 our main focus was news and all the news. Now, we are still doing that, but we are also offering photoshoots, forums, links. Soon we will add multilinguality, a downloads section and... more. If you have 'just the news' on your desktop, will you still visit all the other aspects of our website? Or all the other MSX websites we are linking to in our links database and/or from our newsposts?

Why not?
OK, Slashdot is almost completely about news, so I can't compare to that. But I think that people will definately still visit the other parts. If you disagree, why is there a MRC bot on IRC? It serves exactly the same purpose.

But, your first argument is probably very true: Slashdot also had to take measures to prevent server overload with the RSS feeds. They only allow once per 30 minute updates from RSS clients.

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If you disagree, why is there a MRC bot on IRC? It serves exactly the same purpose.

Its a small present to all those die-hard MSX users on #msx and #msxdev. This are only a few people, furthermore there is only one computer running the adapted RSS script to check if there are new posts or not. (The computer MG-MRC is running on). This causes no datatraffic trouble as of yet.

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But, your first argument is probably very true: Slashdot also had to take measures to prevent server overload with the RSS feeds. They only allow once per 30 minute updates from RSS clients.

I'm wondering how to allow this. By checking IP addresses? or by asking people not to check more often?

Another question that comes to mind is...

how many people want RSS newsfeeds from msx.org? (either websites or desktops)

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>>If you disagree, why is there a MRC bot on IRC? It serves exactly the same purpose.<< Its a small present to all those die-hard MSX users on #msx and #msxdev. This are only a few people, furthermore there is only one computer running the adapted RSS script to check if there are new posts or not. (The computer MG-MRC is running on). This causes no datatraffic trouble as of yet.

I was talking about the second reason here. I agree that the datatraffic could be a fatal problem.

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>>But, your first argument is probably very true: Slashdot also had to take measures to prevent server overload with the RSS feeds. They only allow once per 30 minute updates from RSS clients.<< I'm wondering how to allow this. By checking IP addresses? or by asking people not to check more often?

Yes, they log IPs and ban IPs that request more often than once per 30 minutes. It's explained in their FAQ. Check it out.

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Another question that comes to mind is... how many people want RSS newsfeeds from msx.org? (either websites or desktops)

How can I tell? I would ike it, since I won't have to check the web site, just for the news. I can just click on my ticker applet on headlines that are of interest to me. And of course I can also see if there is new news at all!

I don't think web sites use RSS feeds, at least I haven't seen any that use the Slashdot RSS feeds.

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I don't think web sites use RSS feeds, at least I haven't seen any that use the Slashdot RSS feeds.

hmm, the old GenMSX site did support RSS (the news was shown on file-hunter.com), but it wasn't made public. The new GenMSX site also supports RSS, but again its not made public. Why ? nobody asked for it

and btw, I asked this RSS feature a loooong time ago for msx.org when they still had the old site

RSS sounds pretty nice.

Imagine having an active desktop, or something similar, with on it an updated overview of the latest 5 headlines, latest 5 forum threads, all linked to the MRC if I click on them. That could be pretty neat . And it isn't *really* that much data, I mean, that's 10 lines of text, shouldn't be more than 200 bytes, generally spoken. Compared the the X kilobytes of code and pictures each single msx.org page request generates, I don't think bandwidth is a big issue here...

I mean, if I write a forum message and refresh it every 10 minutes during one hour to see if there are any replies, or if I only go to the msx.org frontpage a couple of times a day, I'm already creating much more traffic than this RSS would.

So you don't have to pass on entire news articles, that's way overdone, I think so too, and that's also unique msx.org content. But headlines shouldn't be a problem, *if* sites would put the msx.org 5 latest headlines on their site, then it will only make msx.org more known to other interested people.

Just my 2 cents.


~Grauw

^^ agreeing with Grauw and manuel here ^^

I recently discovered the newsticker applet in Mandrake and before that I never visited Slashdot, Linux Weekly News, freshPorts or any of the other feeds I am subscribed to.
Hence, it even makes me visit Freshmeat more often because I see some perhaps interesting program release headlines.

Especially the integration with the forum would be great. Especially if it gets split into all categories, so I can use RSS on the categories I am interested in. That way I would check out MORE threads and get less annoyed of the huge amount of emails I receive daily from the forums I am subscribed to... (which can SAVE some traffic as well...)

Sylvester : what is the location of that RSSfeed of GenMsx ? I would like to add it to my ticker

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Sylvester : what is the location of that RSSfeed of GenMsx ? I would like to add it to my ticker

I will anounce it with the next update of my site (I hope this weekend, but depends on the weather, it's too hot to program now )

I don't get the whole forum-subscription at all ^^;
Why not just regularly visit MRC? It's worth it anyway...

So there ARE more people who'd like to see MRC RSS feeds? It's quite easy to implement it for newsposts, and will take only a little more time do let it handle forum posts (categorized) as well. However, after talking it over with the board of admins we had quite good reasons not to start giving RSS feeds. One of the arguments is that we'd like to keep msx.org somewhat exclusive.

You probably noticed that we don't like to copy/paste information directly and that we don't appreciate others copy/pasting us. According to us, a website should have its own style. For that reason whe re-write newsposts and always look for a tiny bit of extra background information which makes the news more understandable for non-regular visitors. If we allow (part of) MRC headlines appear on other sites, part of that exclusive feel might/will be lost.

Besides, when you directly click to the links on your desktop, will you still visit other parts of the website as often as you do now? There are a lot of pros and cons in this one.

Why not try it out for a month or so?
if you see (too many) sites copying your news, you can still discontinue it for that reason..

Or people should join an IRC channel where MG-MRC resides, then they'll be up to date all the time, since it's displays whenever there's a new newspost.