Either need to change it to weekly comments or change the text to “Most active commentators for the past month”.

@ LiC: I like your idea on contests and rewards. That is why I did a link love post a little while back. To reward regular readers and commenter’s. That reminds me, it is time for another one and I’ve got this very person in mind.
@ Damien: thanks for your input. Interlinking is something I also regularly do, but I just had to find out that not everybody is fond of it.

@ Charles: great comment, thank you very much. Like you, I think along the same ways. I personally prefer to build a relationship with my readers and like to offer full feed on my blogs.

Some people told me that was silly but I disagreed and did it anyway. Judging by my comments I can’t complain and know that I did the right thing after all.

@ Leah: I loved your soapbox moment and you made some strong and valuable points there. A great way to look at this from the other side of the gap, hopefully making people think.

@ everyone: thanks so much for all your input. I think it is save to say that we are pretty much all in favor of full feeds - just like I hoped we would be.

Hopefully this will help new bloggers decide which way to go to.

As both a reader and blogger I prefer full feeds. The purpose of my blog is to share information and develop a relationship with readers and I find that this is best achieved in giving them what they want as easily as possible. I don’t have ads on the site and find that I’ve generated more income by readers becoming clients.

Another thing to consider is that the regular readers of your blog are also less likely to click on advertising anyway, so give the regulars the full feed and build a base. That base of readers will give you a platform for acquiring sponsership (and you can put sponsorship info in the feed. I think Daring Fireball does this).

As for my personal reading habits, I’ll click over to the site if it’s something I either want to comment on, or blog about on one of my own blogs. I also click over if there is embedded video as I usually want that to get completely loaded before I’m bothering to watch, and that’s easier to do in my browser than my reader. Depending on the type of content I may also pre-load a bunch of pages in the browser to get the full picture/layout experience as I’m going through all my feeds, then close down the reader and switch to the browser to read those items.

Certain blogs are information only and don’t involve heavy discussions, therefore they should probably publish full feeds. On the contrary, a celebrity gossip blogger might consider partial feeds since many want to take part on the latest gossip about Britney. (That would exclude me however )
@ MattG: I’m the same. It wouldn’t feel right to me to publish partials when I myself can’t stand them.

@ Sean O: the old convenience factor obviously plays a role when we browse feeds. Plus time limitations add to this big time. Thank you for giving me some insight into your behavior too. This is very valuable to know for a blogger.

@ Dr.R: hey, one subscriber is a start. You mentioned your “silly widgets”. Don;t you think that would annoy your readers too then?

I’ve noticed that the MyBlogLog widget loads slowly and I seriously consider taking it off my own blog, since it is quite annoying. Sometimes we seem to put too much weight on all those things, just to have a flash looking blog.

As a blogger on my site that discusses global warming issues, I publish excerpts for my feeds and try to make that excerpt well written enough to interest the click through. If the reader doesn’t like it then there is not much I can do. I find that subscriptions really don’t suffer that much since if the article is interesting it is worth clicking through. If it covers a subject that is not immediately appealing then the first paragraph is enough to make the determination and giving the subscriber more is probably a waste of time.