I have written several times about RSS in this space, often wrongly.

But now I have something which, I hope, will prove non-controversial. (For those who want to know more about RSS, O'Reilly has a fine book out on the subject.)

If your story is behind a registration firewall, don't put it in your RSS feed.

Many newspapers today routinely run RSS feeds on all stories, often through Moreover. Many also have registration firewalls. If you're not willing to deliver your personal data (and remember a new password for each publisher) they don't want to see you.

Well, I don't want to see them, either.

Fortunately, there are solutions.

The New York Times, a leader in false registration, is a leader in this area.

What they do is create partner tags on the end of URLs sent through blogs (like this one) or search engines just as Google. They even have a Web address where ordinary users can create these tags.

The tags not only let users in, but let the Times know where their extra traffic is coming from, which increases its value. Plus, by identifying the tags as they come in, the Times can add different ads, even full-page ads, customized to the user coming in.

Why haven't other papers done this? Sheer laziness. I don't think the = sign is patented.