Subject: Re: PaceDateModified

From: Antone Roundy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:58:55 -0700

On Saturday, October 30, 2004, at 12:00  PM, Asbjørn Ulsberg wrote:
> ... what an aggregator should do whenever atom:updated changes for a 
> given entry. Should it:
>
>   1. Update the entry's content.
>   2. Mark the entry as unread.
>   3. Score it upwards in the message pool.
>   4. (And then) do nothing.
>
I think #1 is obviously expected behavior.  Beyond that, handling could 
vary. I would like an aggregator to give me the option on a 
feed-by-feed basis to have the entry marked updated (not unread--I'd 
like to see a distinction between the two) or not.  Some publishers are 
going to feel that every spelling fix is a significant change, which is 
their prerogative.  I don't think that spelling changes are a big deal, 
so if the ratio of spelling-fix-like changes to 
updates-that-I-think-are-significant is too high, I won't want to be 
told about changes to atom:updated in those feeds.  In other feeds 
where atom:updated is generally changed only when a change is made that 
makes me want to see the entry again, I'll want to be notified.

---

From: Danny Ayers <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 18:10:18 +0100

> makes me want to see the entry again, I'll want to be notified.

Let me get this straight, with atom:updated alone you expect it to be
likely for the client to want to decide on a per-feed basis on how to
behave when the value is changed?

If that is the case, would you think the same decisions would have to
be made if there was an additional atom:modified value, changed on for
every minor modification with atom:updated reserved for
publisher-significant changes?

Cheers,
Danny.

-- 

http://dannyayers.com

---

From: Antone Roundy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 10:38:26 -0700

> publisher-significant changes?
Yes, I do.  The reason is that, just as some publishers will write what 
I would consider bad titles or summaries (titles and summaries that 
don't do a good job of helping me to know what is in the content), some 
publishers will do what I consider to be a bad job of deciding whether 
a change to an entry warrants my rereading of it.  But others will do a 
good job, and I'd like atom:updated to be available for them.

---

From: Danny Ayers <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 18:52:49 +0100

> good job, and I'd like atom:updated to be available for them.

Ok, that makes sense. It seems like this is actually orthogonal to the
uses of an 'objective' (machine-determined) date.

Perhaps this ties in with Asbjørn's notion of the difference between
protocol-metadata and format-metadata. This could maybe also be
expressed by saying that where atom:modified is information about the
payload atom:updated is conceptually part of the payload.

Cheers,
Danny.

-- 

http://dannyayers.com