Re: Withdrawn entries

[Dare Obasanjo <kpako@xxxxxxxxx>]

--- Graham Parks <dtcd@xxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
> I want my aggregrator to be able to tell the user
> whether an entry disappeared from the feed because
> it got too old, or because it was withdrawn*.

There are already ways to do this today. 

Got too old == remove it from the feed 
Superceded  == change text, keep same guid/link

In fact at least one aggregator has a feature that
lets you see diffs between the new and superceded
version of a news item in the feed. 

> Currently Shrook can only show
> still-in-the-feed/was-in-the-feed (it greys the
> titles), but the distinction the user probably wants
> is withdrawn/not-withdrawn. Also, a user might not
> want to see withdrawn entries at all (outdated news
> reports etc).

What entries show up in the aggregator should be
controlled by the user not by the server. At best, the
server can provide hints which the client and user are
free to ignore. 

> My first idea was to try loading the <link> each
> time an entry is no longer in the main feed to see
> if you get a 404, but that would waste bandwidth and
> wouldn't work all the time, and is one of those daft
> hacks I mentioned yesterday. More elegant solutions:
> 1) When an entry diasappears, ping the server with
> its id to ask if its still current.
> 2) Use the previous group of entries axis link thing
> Sam was talking about at the weekend, to check if
> that's where it went
> 3) Put the ids of a few previous entries at the
> bottom of the feed before they disappear completely.
> That way the client knows they weren't just
> withdrawn.
> 4) Forget the idea of a flat file feed and do the
> whole thing programmatically (cf POP), so you don't
> run into this problem in the first place.

All overkill, see my comments above about how it is
solved today. 


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