Poll Results

Total votes: 2430

I don't use the RSS feed, so I don't care.: 1331 (54.8%)
Huh? What? Stop talking gibberish!: 508 (20.9%)
Yes, that would be nice.: 162 (6.7%)
I use the RSS feed and don't mind either way.: 152 (6.3%)
Yes, I really want you to do that!: 103 (4.2%)
No, I like it the way it is now.: 103 (4.2%)
No! Don't do it! That would be actively bad.: 71 (2.9%)

You know, I'm still not quite sure what to do about this. Adding the images to the RSS feed is a major hit on my bandwidth, which I pay for out of my own pocket. I estimate enabling this feature would multiply my bandwidth by a factor of 10 or so. The reason is because I currently block my images from being loaded on other sites. I had to do this some time ago, because people were posting hotlinks to my comics in their blogs, LiveJournals, on forums, etc. And some of those pages got hundreds or thousands of users looking at them every day, with the result that my server got hit for the image each time, so I was showing the image more on other people's sites than on my own site, and it was getting perilously close to costing me extra webhosting fees each month. In order to enable the image in the RSS feed, I'd have to remove that block.

Now, my webhost grants me extra bandwidth every month, which is growing faster than my readership, so it's likely that now I have enough to handle all those extra hits. But... I'm still wary. So I'm going to think about this a little longer. If I do put the images into an RSS feed, I will also include the annotations, and I won't change the existing feed - I'll make a second one. But I'm not promising anything just yet. I do want to make you all happy, but sometimes I just need a little time.