Mastodon: Atom feed titles need to be more expressive

[jbond23]

A recent update (https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/1343) changed Atom feeds so that all item titles read "New status by userid". This may work for federation but it's user unfriendly if you're reading the Atom in an Atom reader. I'd prefer to see something like the first 128 chars of an html_stripped version of the description. userid is already in the channel.title so that's redundant in the item. And "new entry" is obvious.

item.title is generally optional but lots of readers fail when it's missing. It's not really clear how title, summary and description should be used for source data that only has one field such as Mastodon and Twitter. So having a short version of the html stripped full text seems to be an acceptable compromise.

[sycom]

Absolutely agree, atom is about wide openness. Title could be

• all chars before a comma ,, or any separator
• if none first 128 chars

[husimo]

Maybe it should be interesting to have the choice. Display the 128 first chars or "New status by userid". It's not user friendly at all currently.

[thiagomgd]

This should be an option, because nowadays many people are using RSS to integrate Mastodon with other apps by using IFTTT or similar services, and the fixed title can easily be used as a filter. But yes, I agree that it would be a nice option to have.

On another note, I would like replies titles to be New reply by user instead of New status by user. That way it would be easier to filter my toots, and my replies. :)

[MilkManzJourDaddy]

I see a use-case where, unfortunately due to this issue, a 3rd Party RSS Feed from Twitter™ is being used instead of an Atom Feed from Mastodon.  And, the client MastodonToTwitter is being used to post, so Mastodon is in the loop.  Example: This Matrix, Mastodon Toot is the same content as this Matrix, Twitter™ Tweet.  In the Matrix room for Mastodon, #Mastodon:disroot.org, (read-only via: https://view.matrix.org/alias/%23Mastodon:disroot.org ), we have a feed from @[email protected].atom, so we see this issue.  We all have limited time and we would rather have an idea of the content of the dozens of links thrown at us before we click, otherwise they are ignored.  One possible solution mentioned was https://gitlab.com/ilpianista/FeedToot •but it would be better to have a wholistic approach within Mastodon itself. 

[mike-burns]

@husimo @thiagomgd why would it be an option? What's the use case for toggling the useful title off?

[albjeremias]

Please don't break RSS... its such a great invention... how can this be fixed? I could try to make a pull request...

"Subscribing to a website RSS removes the need for the user to manually check the website for new content. Instead, their browser constantly monitors the site and informs the user of any updates. The browser can also be commanded to automatically download the new data for the user." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS

[mike-burns]

how can this be fixed? I could try to make a pull request...

That is exactly how. Start in app/models/status.rb and spec/fixtures/requests/activitypub-feed.txt. I haven't looked into this more but that's where I'd start digging.

No one is taking RSS away. We'd like the title to be better.

[Gargron]

We don't have and never had RSS :thinking:

[trwnh]

@gargron Atom feeds are different in technical implementation but still essentially the same as RSS feeds, and there's probably significant confusion about that. RSS/Atom/XML feeds are mostly interchangeable terms to a lot of people.

[albjeremias]

@Gargron you are right.. i meant atom.. where you can use the link: https://yourinstance/@user.atom
as for atom, mastodon is breaking the federation between websites, which was what atom/rss/xml feeds were already doing for a long time... so would be really awesome to have this working in a correct/standard way.

[mike-burns]

@albjeremias sorry, I don't understand. This ticket is for changing the title used in the atom feeds -- a cosmetic change. Are you reporting a different bug? Is something broken?

[albjeremias]

@mike-burns im sorry, you are correct! that is exactly the problem the title of the mastodon .. and it seems more complicated to solve than what I thought, ill investigate about how other networks do!

the other issue is also related:
"the links on rss for reply toos, redirects the user to a json blob"

I can't find an issue about this second issue.. should i create it?
I get this link:
https://mastodon.social/users/FuckOffGoogle/statuses/99891165779679992/activity

and expected this:
https://mastodon.social/users/FuckOffGoogle/statuses/99891165779679992

without /activity

[Gargron]

This is what I mean when I say the Atom feeds were never meant for end-users, they're for OStatus federation. I no longer feel like this issue is warranted. There's probably an open issue about adding RSS instead

[jbond23]

How does an expressive title make the feed less suitable for OStatus federation? Is item.title actually used in OStatus Federation?

I have to say that I'm disappointed with the reason given for closing the issue. I have a use case for reading the atom feed and then displaying it in a sidebar of a blog. I'm having to recreate an abstract of the toot to display where it would be simpler and easier to just display an expressive title.

If there's a use case for RSS as a user friendly syndication format, then there's the same use case for an Atom representation. And without getting into the religious atom vs rss wars, Atom is just a superset of RSS.

[albjeremias]

@jbond23 it seems so... not even the links make sense, they point to a json blob, if the atom is changed the OStatus probably would break.

For the rss there seems to be already another issue:
https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/673

[nightpool]

that's not a pull request that's just an open issue

On Sun, Apr 22, 2018 at 4:06 PM Albatroz Jeremias [e-mail]
wrote:

@jbond23 https://github.com/jbond23 it seems so... not even the links
make sense, they point to a json blob, if the atom is changed the OStatus
probably would break.

I guess there is already a PR... checkout it out in here:

673 https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/issues/673

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[albjeremias]

There were 2 pull requests but both did not solve this issue.. the titles of the rss feeds are still "New status by ajeremias" and "ajeremias shared a status by [email protected]" instead of being the content inside the status on the title... but I guess this is more problematic to change...

btw the new link looks like this:
https://mastodon.social/@fuckoffgoogle.rss

https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/7259 & https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/pull/7436/files

[MilkManzJourDaddy]

I too am "disappointed with the reason given for closing the issue."

I thought I presented a use-case above. I could see some arbitrary work-flow thing where this issue was closed in favour of another specificly listed issue. But probably does not cover that, and the tone is dismissive of user concerns. I almost feel as if it's a canned response from Twitter™ ala "Thank you for your input. We value your feedback. […but really don't give a crap!]".

It's a sad day when we need to Reverse Engineer and find workarounds for F(L)OSS projects that are supposed to be for users. But FWIW: https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge •

[nightpool]

if the RSS feeds still don't meet your requirements, feel free to open another issue or make a pull request. this one was closed because it was specifically about the atom feeds, which are used for federation

[MilkManzJourDaddy]

Done.

See #8125 .