While more and more “big media” Web sites are jumping aboard the RSS/ATOM bandwagon, what's disappointing is that many of them seem to be implementing RSS in a way I find disturbing. RSS has a <description> tag to give a synopsis about the content, so the consumer of the feed can determine whether or not he wants to read the content. Personally, I like it when the <description> contains the entire text of the syndicated content, as is done here on ScottOnWriting.NET.
Of course, many Web sites' revenues are realized by attracting eyeballs to view their ads, so these sites attempt to use syndication to garner a click-through to the Web site article. That's fine, I'm ok with that; I'm even ok with having ads in the RSS items (like a text blurb at the bottom of each item's description). What is annoying, though, is when a site omits the <description> altogether, providing just a <title> and <link>. Given this scenario, most RSS readers will automatically load the Web page specified in the <link>, making clicking on an RSS item in a reader tantamount to visiting the page.
This is a nuisance, and has prompted me to unsubscribe to those feeds that employ this technique. For example, U.S. News & World Report does this, and C|Net News just started doing this as well. While I respect the need for these sites to draw visitors to their Web site, I find it distasteful that they're omitting the content's synopsis in order to attain more page views.