Bloglines had a little surprise waiting for me this morning:
BOFH not available in feeds
Thanks for your interest in the Bastard Operator from Hell. Simon Travaglia, the author of BOFH, has asked us to remove links to his articles from our RSS feeds. We will not restore the BOFH RSS feeds without his permission.
Huh? You what? I keep - or rather kept - up to date with the antics of the BOFH (a regular feature of The Register, a UK tech news site) through the feed (the feed is not full text - it just lets me know when a new post is up). The only reasons I can think of that Simon Travaglia has decided to remove the BOFH from feeds are:
- He's not very smart.
- He hates people who read what he writes.
- He's making a stand - refusing to allow the BOFH in feeds unless the full posts/articles are allowed.
I'd love to know which it is! (And if anyone can think of any reasons I might be missing for this mysterious action, feel free to share!)
6 Comments
That's because he IS the BOFH...
#1, moose, France, 25 October 2006. Reply to this.
I bet it's ElReg that is behind it all and want more people not just to brows the BOFH archive but the whole page. More ads shown and more money made. I understand it, but I don't see why they don't provide a RSS feed on the page.
#2, Ole, Norway, 26 October 2006. Reply to this.
The thing is, the feed only links through to the page. This is giving them less clicks.
#3, Dave Child, United Kingdom, 26 October 2006. Reply to this.
It's his bastard side talking. :)
#4, Alenônimo, Brazil, 26 October 2006. Reply to this.
BOFH has a lot of history (~http://http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOFH) before the Register. A good reasoning could be that the BOFH stories have also been published in book format and the author wants to actually get paid his worth.
#5, Yannis Rizos, Greece, 27 November 2006. Reply to this.
That might be a reason to remove the BOFH from The Register as a whole, but a bad reason to remove notices of additions to the BOFH saga from the feed. It will reduce book sales, not increase it.
#6, Dave Child, United Kingdom, 27 November 2006. Reply to this.