Weekend discussion: How do you read your RSS feeds?

Web Worker Daily and Steve Rubel have a good topic going about how we read our RSS feeds. This time, though, it’s not about what feedreader we use — it sort of assumes everyone is using Google Reader by now. Readers of this site know that’s what I use.

Here’s what Rubel offers as his workflow:

I bucket my feeds in the Google Reader into a bunch of different folders. I put about 30-40 in my “faves” folder. I clear the posts in this group throughout the day every day, often from a mobile device.

Then I have Edelman and “searches” buckets, where I monitor your comments, mentions of our firm, links to my blog, etc. I plow through these once every 24-36 hours.

Finally I have folders for news sites, meme trackers and blogs. Sometimes it takes me over a week to clear these out and I scan here in headline view to speed up my reading.

I have something similar but more rudimentary: I have my favorites grouped into one folder (A-List), the bulk of my subscriptions that I like but only occasionally love in another (B-List), and then the feeds I rarely read or am actively looking for a reason to unsubscribe to (Z-List). So I essentially create a classic bell curve distribution with this system of mine.  It works well so far.

I read the feeds on a computer; never from my BlackBerry. I have a tendency to add subscriptions at a whim and then later regret it to one degree or another, which again goes back to my weird continuous-improvement obsession I have to look for reasons to unsubscribe to a feed. I’m getting better at this, though: it’s harder and harder to get me to subscribe to your feed.

Incidentally — reason #1 for unsubscription? Partial feeds. There are some websites I love that publish partials, and I just won’t stay subscribed. I can’t stand partial feeds and I think they’re based on faulty logic, because the main reason behind them is to get you to actually visit the site instead of reading its content in a feedreader.

Newsflash: that ploy doesn’t work.

Thing is, because Google Reader is my nexus for all web content, I don’t go to websites individually too often (Daring Fireball being the only exception, which is stupid because I subscribe to DF and thus have access to the linked list feed). In so many cases, all actual website visits actually are spawned from Google Reader, not despite it. Example: I love kottke.org and will often go to his site just because I dig his layout. And I read his feeds. Yet he gets visits from me. Huh. Go figure.

Anyway, now that I’m way off track, let me ask: how to you read and manage your feeds?