RSS is an acronym that may have several meanings, but a couple of them are RICH SITE SUMMARY and REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION. RSS, unlike Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Yahoo Groups, etc., is NOT proprietary. It is "open source" and a universal standard.
From Wikipedia on RSS:
"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...."
This ProvGardener website is automatically collecting a lot of Rhode Island RSS feeds for the public, so readers don't have to go to the trouble of setting them up. I index the news items by topic and municipality, which makes it possible for Rhode Islanders to get up to speed and keep informed about environmental issues in the state and in their own localities.
But many groups are not using this wonderful RSS capability! Instead, they rely on email, Facebook, Twitter, Google or Yahoo groups.... It is NOT POSSIBLE to reach everyone who would be interested in a particular bit of news through emails lists, Facebook postings, Twitter, and whatever other distribution channels groups rely on. The Providence Journal, TV and radio stations, and the local newspapers can't pick up all of the happenings and announcements either. So people who would come to your event or be interested in your news never find out about you.
Everybody is sending out news, and that means that there are hundreds (maybe thousands) of news sources every weekday -- even in little old Rhode Island.
Providential Gardener is concerned about this problem and seeks to aggregate scattered news and index by useful topics. This is a huge problem, and it is made more difficult by so many groups failing to set up RSS feeds of their news.
SOME EXAMPLES OF USEFUL RSS FEEDS:
- Renewable Now
- Northeast Organic Farming Association
- ecoRI
- BeachSAMP News
- Conservation Law Foundation Scoop
The above feeds automatically flow into this website and it's easy and quick to index the articles by category and municipality. [I have found that ecoRI and CLF feeds get stuck, though, and I have to deliberately import them -- perhaps this is a Drupal issue(?), but it is still a lot easier to work with ecoRI and CLF than news from websites without RSS feeds built in.]
However, there are a lot of articles that should be included that I would have to include the hard way -- create a record by hand, cut and paste the URL, describe the article or excerpt it -- this is prohibitively time consuming and so those articles, commentaries, columns, etc., are lost to ProvGardener and thus to the general public, unless readers happen to go to the website.
SOME EXAMPLES OF MISSING RSS FEEDS (or at least, I haven't found them yet) These feeds should be created if they have not already been created:
- Scott Turner's ProJo column on Saturdays
- Ed Fitzpatrick's ProJo column
- Trash Tutorial in ProJo on Saturdays
- URI Outreach Center
- RI Land Trusts
Providential Gardener urges all Rhode Island groups that want to reach the general public to set up RSS feeds!
