When you click a link to a webpage, your browser doesn't automatically bookmark it, right? So why should clicking a link to an RSS feed automatically subscribe you to it? It shouldn't. It should show you the feed, which you could then subscribe to if you like it. How many times have you subscribed to a feed to check it out, only to unsubscribe to it immediately? I've done it many times.
Of course, just as web browsers will let you "bookmark link location", feed readers should have a way to subscribe to a feed without viewing it first. Dragging and dropping a feed link to your feed reader's subscription list is a good way to do this. For people who can't (or don't know how to) configure their web browser to open feeds in their feed reader when clicked, there should be a place where the link can be dragged and dropped which will display it without subscribing too.
Feeds are still early enough in their adoption curve that we haven't worked out all the details for how best to interact with them. This is one area where an adjustment would be good.
July 5th, 2004 at 4:45 pm
A concrete example of where clicking a link definitely should not result in a new subscription is the "start", "prev" and "next" links in the Atom format. These links are used to navigate around within a feed (to read things that have scrolled off the bottom of the feed, for example). To handle that correctly, feed readers need to be able to display a feed without subscribing to it.