What makes RSSMonster different from other RSS readers?
RSSMonster is a signal-driven RSS reader.
Instead of showing articles purely in chronological order, it ranks them by importance using quality, uniqueness, freshness, and feed trust.
Traditional readers answer:
“What’s new?”
RSSMonster answers:
“What actually matters?”
Is RSSMonster an algorithm deciding what I see?
Yes — but you control it.
RSSMonster uses transparent, deterministic scoring based on:
- Article quality
- Originality
- Feed trust
- Freshness
- Your own engagement
There is:
- No black-box personalization
- No external tracking
- No advertising incentives
Everything can be inspected, filtered, or overridden.
Can I disable ranking and use RSSMonster like a classic RSS reader?
Yes.
You can:
- Sort by date (
sort:desc) - Ignore quality or trust thresholds
- Use Smart Folders that behave like traditional views
RSSMonster does not force ranking — it enables it.
Why are some articles hidden or ranked very low?
Articles may rank lower when they:
- Are near-duplicates of other articles
- Come from low-trust feeds
- Have low writing quality
- Are old or stale
- Provide little original information
Nothing is deleted automatically unless you create a rule that does so.
Why do I sometimes see only one article for a big news story?
RSSMonster uses semantic clustering.
If multiple feeds publish the same story:
- They are grouped into a single cluster
- You see the best or most original article first
- You can expand the cluster to view all sources
This reduces noise from syndication.
What is a cluster, exactly?
A cluster represents one story or topic covered by multiple articles.
Clusters allow RSSMonster to:
- Reduce repetition
- Compare originality
- Track engagement at the story level
- Rank coverage, not just posts
How is article quality calculated?
Article quality is a normalized score (0.0 – 1.0) based on:
- Writing structure
- Promotional language detection
- Sentiment neutrality
- Content richness
Quality is used for ranking, filtering, and automation — not censorship.
What does “uniqueness” mean?
Uniqueness measures how much new information an article adds compared to others in the same cluster.
Original reporting ranks higher than:
- Rewrites
- Syndicated copies
- Press-release clones
How does feed trust work?
Feed trust is a long-term score (0.0 – 1.0) earned over time.
It is based on:
- Originality of published articles
- Average quality
- User engagement (reads, clicks, stars)
- Consistency of publishing
Trust improves ranking reliability but never fully hides content.
Why doesn’t feed trust update immediately?
Feed trust is designed to be stable, not reactive.
It updates in batches to:
- Avoid spikes
- Prevent gaming
- Reflect long-term behavior
You can manually recalculate trust using:
npm run feedtrust