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For me the distinction between sites is purely topical. I get that there's a right and a wrong place to ask questions, but I regularly ask questions across a number of sites. They all log me in (in a weird sort of way), and now there's the global inbox.

I've read that there's a feed per site and that there's a master profile but neither of these are what I want.

What I'd like is to have an RSS feed from my global inbox, i.e. to include notification of updates to my public questions, answers, comments. Is this possible?

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This is now possible.

Basically I've added the ability to link your account on my website to your Stack Exchange account. You will then get a custom URL you can subscribe to.

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  • genius! thank you so much. This works perfectly.
    – artfulrobot
    Jun 13, 2012 at 11:15
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The problem here is one of privacy. RSS, by convention, does not typically involve any authentication. So there is nothing to keep me from subscribing to your global inbox feed, if it were implemented standard-like.

HTTP authentication could be applied, but that would break RSS feed readers' ability to read the feed.

Another option would be for each user's feed to have a unique, hard-to-guess url, but that still fails the security test in my mind; unlike typical authentication, where you can change your login info if it is compromised, such a system would not necessarily.

Of course, it could further allow regeneration of each user's feed url but... now we are getting into complex setting territory. Also,changing your feed url would 'reset' the feed in your readers (it would literally be a different feed), so it just seems to go against the middle "S" of RSS.

I think the easiest opyion would be some sort of desktop notifier, of which I think there are some on Stack Apps. I also seem to recall something that lets you feedify your inbox even, iirc... which renders my whole "stay off my lawn" argument somewhat moot, if true!

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    LiveJournal uses HTTP-authed private feeds; GitHub and LinkedIn use random URLs for private feeds, and LinkedIn provides a regenerate button. I use all of these. They work.
    – Kevin Reid
    May 21, 2012 at 11:55
  • @KevinReid I don't doubt at all that they work; I just don't know if they are worth it.
    – Andrew Barber
    May 21, 2012 at 13:53
  • one of privacy - is it, though, on a public site where all content is visible to everyone. All it is is a collection of content that one person is interested in. This is available anyway, I just clicked your name and I can see all your questions, answers etc. If I really wanted to hunt you down I could search for your username on other sites too. The point is that this would be a very useful feature and I'm not sure privacy matters to folks who post stuff on a public website.
    – artfulrobot
    May 22, 2012 at 20:34
  • @artfulrobot My inbox doesn't contain the same info as my public profile at all. And sometimes inboxes contain quite private information.
    – Andrew Barber
    May 22, 2012 at 20:38
  • OK, didn't realise that there was private info on accounts, certainly agree it's not suitable if there is personal information available. But the point is that a feed for public-stuff-I'd-reasonably-want-to-know-about would be v. useful. In my usage the 'global inbox' just shows me when someone's replied in some way, publicly, which I really value and would benefit from having in a feed so I don't need to log on to monitor my questions etc.
    – artfulrobot
    May 22, 2012 at 21:55

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