A little Bloglines weeding
One thing I hate about news aggregation is the propensity towards redundancy within topic areas. For instance, I’ll find the same post about a library topic on LISNews.com, Library Grrls, Library Link of the Day, and maybe a few other feeds one day, then I’ll see it in my Library Journal and in a few other feeds the next day, or maybe a few days later. News aggregation is s’posed to help you weed out the stuff you don’t want to read, but it’s just as bad to get extra doses of stuff you do want to read (and just because baby aspirin tastes good doesn’t make it OK to eat 6 of them in one go). Besides, how depressing is it to read 8 similar posts on how a patron in Hawaii was banned from a library for looking at a gay-oriented travel site? It was bad enough, and educational enough, the first time.
I myself don’t repost something I’ve seen unless I’ve got something to really say about it. And I like other feeds which do much the same. So I’m doing a little weeding in my Bloglines roll today, to try to not only take out the dupers, but perhaps make space for feeds related to blogs I’ve been sampling. It’s like Steven says, the best way to keep your aggregator working for you is if you find that balance, and only add as many as you take away.
Weed, weed, weed…
Tags: feeds
