Are you seeing double?

Are you a subscriber to this blog, and if so, do you sometimes see duplicate posts in the feed?

To keep an eye on things, I subscribe through Google Reader and the FeedBurner email subscription service. I haven’t seen any duplicates, but loyal reader Paul S. wrote me yesterday to say he sometimes gets multiple posts.

I hope this isn’t a widespread problem, and wonder if it might be related to my posting procedure:

1. Think of a possible post topic.
2. Procrastinate starting on it for days, weeks, or months.
3. Finally, write something.
4. Become anxious to publish it.
5. Publish it before thoroughly proofing it.
6. Quickly make some minor changes immediately after publishing it.
7. Not long after that, wonder if I should have used additional keywords to snag more search engine traffic.
8. Add keywords.
9. Further down the road, add links to later posts in a “Related” section.
10. Make updates as new information and corrections come to light.
11. Sooner or later, recategorize the post.
12. And so on.

Notice that many of these steps involve re-saving the post. I’ve seen where other people have had problems with old posts reappearing in their feeds when updated, but I thought I was safe from this nuisance. (I wonder if it’s more the the fault of the blog software or the feed reader, or maybe it depends?)

Anyway, I’m sorry if my habitual tweaking causes old posts to pop up again in your reader. If you’ve seen this happen and want to let me know which posts you’re seeing “reposted,” that may help troubleshoot the problem.

Photo Attribution

Thanks to Gaeton Lee for sharing “Double red phone boxes” under a free license: Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.