Am I imagining this, or has Phil of Flying Chair fame managed to hijack Living in China’s rss feed?
Don’t believe me? Go to the site right now, scroll down to China Bloggers – Latest and tell me whose post is on top. See what I mean? I log on in the morning, Phil’s post is on top. I log on at lunchtime, same thing. I log on now, at 10 p.m., and the same post from this afternoon is sitting right there on top of the list, while the posts of less worthy regional bloggers are cruelly expunged from the list after a mere 15 minutes of fame.
I always thought Phil was a decent fellow, a gentleman. This effort (successful so far) to usurp the prime spot for himself makes me wonder.
Phil, if you tell me how you do it and share the code with me, I will delete this post right away! (Edward and Andrea, if Phil is paying you off for this advantage, tell me who I should write the check to!) Thanks.
(Note: If you aren’t involved with Living in China, this post will be pretty meaningless. If you haven’t been there yet, go now — it’s a great site, despite Phil’s machinations.)
Update: Well, I just saw that Phil’s post dropped a notch, so maybe my theory is imperfect. Maybe you should just disregard this post. Still, I’m suspicious.
1
By Phil
Ahh – that may be because I post at 3am, 9am, 1pm, 7pm etc. I post a lot. Of course all of it is complete drivel which is why the SCMP considered me irrelevant to an article about Hong Kong bloggers but I must confess there is no secret technology. I just output a large volume of crap and every time I slip off the top I come up with more crap. Of course this comment should not be taken too seriously as I just got home at 9.30am after a twelve hour drinking binge. But I will think of something crap to post just so I can get back on top of the list. Hic!
November 22, 2003 @ 9:42 am | Comment
2
By brian
Richard I notice the same thing too many times but I think it is just coincidence
November 22, 2003 @ 10:13 am | Comment
3
By Andrea
Richard,
Don’t worry, no bribes have been taken from Phil. It’s just that he and/or you have accidentally discovered one weakness of the aggregator which I have also noticed for quite sometime. All I can say is that as the number of RSS feeds grow, there will be more competition for the limited space and the problem you noticed now will go away (unless you figured out the other trick, which I know of but dare not say, to totally dominate the aggregator section).
November 22, 2003 @ 4:18 pm | Comment
4
By Richard
Thanks for the update, Andrea. I promise, it was all in good fun. It was just so weird, signing on throughout the day and always seeing the same post up on top, and always from Phil.
November 22, 2003 @ 4:50 pm | Comment
5
By Phil
Honestly guys, I had never even thought of this – you all know if you read me that I work from home which mean my posts come throughout the day and into the night (I usually go to bed about 4am).
This is probably the most likely reason why I have the latest story so often.
November 22, 2003 @ 9:07 pm | Comment
6
By Richard
Phil, no one thinks you actually meant to manipulate the order of the posts. There’s apparently just some technical problem with the system, where sometimes certain posts stay in one place longer (or at least that’s how it seems to me). It’s the aggregator, not you. The machines are taking over, and we are helpless against them.
November 22, 2003 @ 11:27 pm | Comment
7
By Chairman Meow
I know how he does and it’s quite simple really. Or should I say I know why it appears this way because I don’t think its intentional. The hint is on the aggregator page. http://www.livinginchina.com/aggregator.shtml
November 24, 2003 @ 9:26 pm | Comment
8
By petes
I thought it funny that as of right now, Flying Chair has the first 8 of 10 aggregated blog feeds. Kind of defeats the purpose of the aggregator.
November 26, 2003 @ 12:59 am | Comment