I prefer not to rant on this weblog, because I don’t find ranting very becoming; however, there are a few hot-button issues that I want to rant about, and so here it is. I promise it will be brief.

I know, like and respect Reg Braithwaite-Lee, who writes here. Frankly, I don’t understand everything Reg writes about, but I love his enthusiasm and I often learn from him. All the more reason, then, for this to annoy me. Recently, he wrote:

I have now received my second request for an RSS feed that does not include a daily summary of links I find relevant to this weblog. So I’m thinking about dropping them outright.

I’m not thinking about offering three feeds (one just links, one just posts, and one blended). I’m not even thinking about offering two feeds. There is one feed for this weblog; the question I am asking myself is whether it should contain my words or whether it should contain my words and a daily summary of interesting links.

To be blunt for a moment, this chaps my ass. To the two people who made this request to Reg, did you read your own e-mail before you sent it? This is what you’re asking Reg:

I know you offer us a lot of useful information and opinion, and I know I don’t have to pay a dime for it, but would you please customize my experience by doubling your effort so I can avoid having to press Delete?

You want a custom experience? Offer to pay for it. If you can’t hit delete once per day because you don’t find Reg’s del.icio.us links interesting, that’s fine; but if you expect Reg to rearrange his writing for you, then you should offer to pay him. I find it the height of arrogance to ask someone to do more work without offering him something in return.

If I were Reg, I would, after calming down, politely decline the request. If I were to act without calming down, I would think along the lines Reg is thinking, and reduce my output to the lowest common denominator. And my readers would likely lose, on the whole.

So Reg, to hell with those two people. I find 90% of your del.icio.us links to be a waste of time, but every week or so I read something I’m glad I read. Funny… it’s like I read something about that somewhere recently.

Updated November 9, 2007. Read more about this here]