HEY MASSIVELY

Posted on October 30, 2008 by Scott Jennings| 21 Comments

Do you think you could make at least 50% of your RSS feed content actual, you know, content?

I know people gotta make a livin’ but this is just ridiculous.

This entry was posted in _. Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://www.damnedvulpine.com/ J.

    People read Massively?

  • Vetarnias

    Hey Jennings,

    Do you think you could make at least 99% of your screenshot without obnoxious sidebars obstructing the view? :P

  • http://bdadv.blogspot.com Bonedead

    Scroll up bitch! I better be in the B’s mothafucka, I’ll get joo sucka!

  • Pandanapper

    @2
    Well since half of them are cut off, see if you can tell which are porn sites! :D

    @1
    I do. It can be rather informative from time to time.

  • http://www.Lagwar.com Jawbox

    LOL, great stuff.

  • http://www.killtenrats.com Zubon

    @3: Hey, we’re on there. :)

  • http://www.massively.com Michael

    We’re on it; we effectively don’t have any control over this element of the site’s operation. This will be dealt with as swiftly as possible.

  • DJ Larkin

    Thats funny, I don’t get those ads at all in my google reader. Of course, the aggresive adblock filtering I use may also be a part of that.

  • Rodalpho

    All weblogsinc blogs have that huge box in RSS readers now. It was pretty annoying, so I filtered it out too.

  • http://weblog.etherized.com Jeremy T

    This is a disturbing trend I’ve seen with a lot of sites – truncating the actual content and replacing it with ads. RPS recently started truncating their feed, too.

    Some sites are so annoying with this that I just stop reading them entirely. Sometimes, though, I’ll take the time to write a script that parses the crappy RSS feed, pulls in the source URLs, scrapes the content from the main site, and inserts that into a new feed that I then subscribe to in my reader.

    I suppose that makes me a jerk. But I’m OK with that.

  • http://beafraid.com hellfire

    “I cannot help thee with that?”

    Or would: “Feeds are working as intended.” be more appropriate?

  • http://www.jpsaunders.co.uk Ghiest

    I recently taken Massively off my feed, 1 because it just recycles everyone elses content as it’s own, but the standard of writing is akin to … well my blog lol.

  • http://bdadv.blogspot.com Bonedead

    @6: Hey buddeh :p

    Smooches

  • yunk

    I think the following favorites links are actually porn:

    “… to play”
    “… Ass Life”

  • http://ve3d.ign.com/ Apache

    RSS feeds are so 2006 ;)

  • http://nwn.blogs.com Wagner James Au

    OMFG I saw this screenshot of Bloglines *in* Bloglines, and my head sploded.

  • http://whaledawg.com Whaledawg

    I give no promises of this pipe, but here you go:
    http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=Dg2vTram3RGwm_Wz_g6H4A&_render=rss

    Put that in your reader and you should get the full feed ad free.

  • http://www.intrigue.co.uk Sylvia

    I’m not on your list. :(

    TBH, I dropped Massively because of their overlinking. Every article is full of self-referring links for any keyword that could possibly relate to a category. I’d click through hoping to find details find myself in a Massively directory of vaguely related articled. Bleah.

  • http://www.WanderingGoblin.com Pig

    We share in the general frustration with Massively as well. I’m noticing this trend, among some gaming sites, toward becoming overly-commercial or “monetized”. They also don’t credit other sites properly (or at all). It all bugs.

    One of the problems might be their hiring of assembly-line typists instead of MMO gamers. We only hire actual, dyed-in-wool MMO geeks, and it really makes a huge difference. There is the occasional grammatical error, but the content they produce is a lot funnier, quirkier, and more entertaining. For that kind of content, I’ll put up with the occasional typo.

    I’ve been noticing this trend with other gaming sites. As the industry expands, it’s becoming more commercial. At gamer-cons, you regularly run into journalists who have no interest whatsoever in gaming, and some who openly mock MMO fans, but they’re there because they are getting paid. (If we ever become that way, someone stop me in the hallway at PAX and punch me right in the face, k?)

    Pig
    http://www.WanderingGoblin.com

  • Pingback: MMOG Nation » Massively’s RSS Feed

  • http://www.haslo.ch/blog/ Guido

    It’s easy: I don’t read RSS feeds with ads. Leaves plenty of content to digest still :)