Reverse RSS Stats

post by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2023-01-29T03:40:01.216Z · LW · GW · 2 comments

Contents

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In 2013 I built a weird feature where clicking on " ◂◂ RSS" at the top of a post gets you an RSS feed that runs in reverse from that post, with a 'new' old post with the publication of each new new post. It's a bit hard to think about, and reminds me of trying to keep tenses straight when time traveling.

I was reminded of it today when someone submitted the post to HN, so I calculated some stats:

I wish more people offered feeds like this!

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comment by gwern · 2023-01-30T00:47:37.359Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

That's a mildly cute idea, but why is the update rate tied to your new publication rate? Suppose you stopped publishing; should everyone reading through your archives stop reading entirely? The choice to start it at an arbitrary post, rather than starting at the beginning, also seems like an odd one: why would one want to read it in reverse, the blog aging backwards in time like Benjamin Button, and posts read in maximally context-free fashion (you ensure that you will always read each post with the least possible context by having only read future posts)?

It seems like an inferior version of Archive-Binge, where the idea is to dripfeed a backlog at a rate which is not unsustainable each day but will eventually catch up.

Replies from: jkaufman
↑ comment by jefftk (jkaufman) · 2023-01-30T02:50:25.789Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

why is the update rate tied to your new publication rate?

For dubious technological aesthetic reasons my blog doesn't do anything unless I touch it and has no state other than the current set of posts. But yes, on a less weird site you'd probably go back one post per day or week.

Suppose you stopped publishing; should everyone reading through your archives stop reading entirely?

I'm happy to have another reason not to stop writing ;)

The choice to start it at an arbitrary post, rather than starting at the beginning, also seems like an odd one: why would one want to read it in reverse, the blog aging backwards in time like Benjamin Button, and posts read in maximally context-free fashion (you ensure that you will always read each post with the least possible context by having only read future posts)?

The beginning wouldn't make much sense: my early posts are much worse than my later ones. At the time I set this up I expected I would continue growing into my voice, and I do still think a randomly post from a year ago is likely better than a random one from five years ago.

My posts mostly don't build on each other: they're generally intended to be stand-alone. When they do pick up from where another post left off I'll link the earlier post from the beginning, so if someone does want that context they can click through.

Posts sometimes are more worth reading closer to when they were written. I think someone reading, say, my covid-era posts now when things are somewhat fresh and they can think about how I got things right/wrong probably gets more out of them than if they read earlier posts for ten years and only then got to these posts.

One thing I could do is go through all my posts and annotate them with a "worth it" bit, and then offer a feed of just these that starts at the first "worth it" post, but that seems like a lot of work for a feature that few people would use.

(Much of this is downstream from being a low-threshold blogger, which means a lot of what I write is not very good. But I can't just write the 5% of posts that I'll be most proud of, or only publish those posts -- that isn't compatible with my experience of motivation.)