Feed Organization, part 2

This may perhaps become an annual battle.  I wrote about organizing my feeds last year.  I've made some progress (in terms of organization), but have lost significant ground as well (in terms of feed reduction).

Organization:


Using some tips found elsewhere, I've tried adopting a couple of conventions.  I have folders called "always", "often", and "trial".  Actually, they're -always, -often, and -trial, to help keep them at the top of my folder list in google reader.  I originally had a -zzz category, but if anything's that bad, I might as well unsubscribe, right?

Since Google Reader doesn't support sub-folders, to provide that kind of organization I had to do something else.  Within each top-level category, I have the ability to create sub categories, -always.subject, so for instance, -always.personalfinance, -always.funnypictures, -always.programming, etc.

I played around with using -aaa, -bbb, and -ccc as top-level categories, but figured the other names are more descriptive.

I haven't gotten everything categorized appropriately (yet), but the ideal process would be: a new feed comes in.  If I can vouch for its value, it may go up into often or always, in some subject area, but more likely, it will go into trial.  After a 5-30 days, I can check out my trends, and see if I'm actually reading that blog, and also what kinds of articles it has posted, how I like it, etc.  From there, I can upgrade the feed from trial to often, or from often to always.  It's an iterative process, and requires constant flux, but by being mindful, I can keep quality feeds towards the top.

Still working on getting this all implemented, but it'll happen.

Feeds:


932 of 'em.  Yep, you heard right.  I went from 966 down to 783, and back up to 932.  I've become slightly more discriminating about adding new feeds (no more adding whole categories suggested by the Google Reader team!).  I also discovered that Google Chrome is much more effective for using Google Reader with large numbers of feeds (gee, I wonder why...).  I stopped using Feed Demon - just not worth the effort to use an additional client.

Some other stats: I've read 1200+ items over the last 30 days, and clicked 30 of them, starred 36, and shared 24 of them.  I read most of my entries on Saturdays, and mostly between 9 and 11 pm.  I've got 73 folders.

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