Hi. This is a public service announcement.

I think that if you offer a podcast-only feed, then that is the only place that you should be including your podcast audio file as an enclosure. Not all clients are able to handle duplicate files yet, and even then, I still think it’s wasteful to include the same podcast in multiple feeds from the same site. And I don’t think we should rely on client applications to clean up after poor habits.

If you look at my Elements entries, you will notice that I only include a link to the mp3 and do not include it as an enclosure. Why? Very simple. I use this weblog as a bootstrap for my podcast, not as a delivery mechanism. If you want to get the podcast, then please subscribe to the Elements feed.

Enclosing files in feeds that I, as a reader of your site, don’t expect to be in the feed is pretty annoying and awfully wasteful - of my time, and your bandwidth.

But maybe it’s just me.