What is the status on RSS news feeds? [Rejected]

[doppler]

The last of the old board to happen. Or did it happen? I don't see links for the feed(s).

RSS is so 90's. But I like it.

 

[kouyo]

Surely I don't have to explain that any high priority production issue would just have the dev commit and push their current changes to their feature branch, checkout the current master, make a bugfix branch and work on the issue immediately.

You're right about that, but managing a platform at this scale means being ruthless with our focus. Context switching isn't just about moving code, it’s the mental tax on a small team that needs to stay prioritized on core stability.

I'm more than happy to content with just a different output format that will directly be usable with my RSS client.

Once we ship an RSS format, we are on the hook to support it through every future API refactor and database change. We don't want to ship a "bare necessities" version that we know will eventually break or become a security liability, because "just enough" is rarely enough for long. It just eventually becomes technical debt.

I understand wanting to reduce the number of open suggestions by rejecting specific items that haven't garnered enough support over a specific time the policy seems to go against the fact that there are pages of suggestions that have been open for a long time with less support/upvotes, yet without a rejected tag

You're right that many suggestions sit without a tag. The reason RSS was specifically tagged "Rejected" is to provide finality. RSS is a protocol that requires a different type of maintenance than adding a new filter to the search page. We want to be honest.

hardly everyone has the means and capabilities to build their own solutions using the API. So they'll either have to content with what's natively supported or take the plunge and hope someone made a script that does exactly what they need and won't break their computer/steal their information.

It’s a valid point. However, we believe the best way to serve the widest range of users, including those without technical skills, is to focus our limited resources on building modern, native alternatives. We’d rather build one good, integrated notification system for everyone than split our focus to maintain a legacy protocol for a few.

While we’re going to keep the "Rejected" status for the reasons above, your points have given us a lot to think about regarding how we communicate these decisions. I also appreciate the constructive dialogue.

 

[Fenatix]

I don't remember if old MD had user-followed feeds or per-manga feeds. I think it was user-followed? I'd pay to have my followed-feed back, but I could live with a simple per-manga, even if either was just updated once a day. There was also a global rss/, Inoreader still remembers it and has it saved (apparently, multiple people still have it in their follows).

When 99% of our traffic is optimized for the API/Site, it’s hard to justify shifting focus to a protocol that the broader industry has largely moved away from in favor of more efficient delivery methods.

Going to disagree on principle, considering how popular feed services like Feedly, Google News, and Inoreader are, alongside at least two api tools that re-implement it [1] [2]. Almost every news website in the world has it, generates it, from niche to mainstream.
Not to mention, the entire podcast ecosystem runs on RSS 2.0. Calling RSS a dead legacy is, in my opinion, dishonest. If anything, it's a done and solved simple technology with a legacy.
Other people have already given better technical answers, but considering the simplicity of the feed generator's backend (that depends on already-existing parts) I honestly don't see how it wasn't already integrated.

The logic is circular when it comes to 'demand'; most people won't bother going to the forums to complain, and you can't track usage/demand when you don't offer it. And considering it was supposed to be back with the revamp, it not being part of the current database architecture was both purposeful choice and not an inherent, but created, limitation. And imo, a non-argument.
Plus, and this is purely personal spite: It was always on the "we're totes going to re-implement it!" list. When I saw the Feeds button I thought it was finally back, but instead something that I would consider actual waste of resources. Just feels like a dick move, tbh. Especially as it was one of MD's old selling points.

 

[kouyo]

We understand that RSS was on the "planned" list for a long time. However, as the site grew and the landscape shifted, the maintenance cost of a native RSS feed would come at the direct expense of things the community was more vocal about.

While we can't track users who would use a non-existent feature, we can track the ecosystem of third-party tools. The fact that several people have built their own RSS bridges using our API actually proves the API is doing exactly what it was designed to do: empower users to build the niche tools they want.

We recognize that this is a loss for those who loved the old workflow. But by keeping the "Rejected" status, we are being honest about where our focus is. We’d rather have a lean, fast site that does a few things perfectly than a bloated one that tries to be everything to everyone and fails to stay stable, like old MD was.

To be completely honest, MD's development was very chaotic and we made a lot of promises we couldn't really fulfil.