[heavymark]

It seems like that /frontpage one shows every single item that appears on the front page, rather than /rss that shows just the top items? Is there a hnrss.org ?comments one specifically for /rss? If so that would be perfect.

[heavymark]

It looks likes hnrss comments supports "points". Do you know what the threshold for the main /rss feed points is? That is, perhaps items only show on that if they are 5 points or higher or something? If so then on hnrss could do something like https://hnrss.org/frontpage?points=5?link=comments. Unless RSS uses other signals other than simply a number of points?

[edavis]

Hi, I created hnrss.org so I can take a stab at this:

1) Yes, adding `?link=comments` is the right way to switch the `<link>` RSS element from the submission URL to the HN comments URL. And since that's a global option, you can also do something like `/newest?points=25&link=comments`. Just join multiple parameters with `&`.

2) The difference between news.ycombinator.com/rss and hnrss.org/frontpage is `/rss` appears to be an exact replica of the HN homepage just as a RSS feed (so the submissions move around in the feed like they do on the homepage) while `/frontpage` is a reverse chronological feed of all HN submissions that currently have the `front_page` tag applied to it within Algolia.

(When Algolia indexes HN submissions, it attaches "tags" that can be referenced later. One of those tags is `front_page` which just means the submission is currently on the front page. See https://hn.algolia.com/api for more.)

Hopefully that clarifies why the two feeds appear to have different items.

3) While hnrss.org does have a `?points=X` filter, that's unrelated to `/frontpage`. Like I said, `/frontpage` is just submissions with the `front_page` tag while `?points=X` only returns submissions over X points. You can combine them, but you don't have to.

Hope this all helps!