Subject: Re: PaceDateModified

From: Antone Roundy <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Nov 2004 08:37:06 -0700

On Friday, October 29, 2004, at 01:47  PM, Bob Wyman wrote:
> There is an implication here that if the
> publisher does *not* change the atom:updated value, then the publisher 
> "does
> not wish to bring this change to the attention of subscribers." If the
> publisher does not wish attention to be drawn to the change, then why 
> would
> aggregators, in-channel intermediaries, search-engines, etc. process 
> the
> change? Why are we providing mechanisms to make it easier for 
> publishers to
> publish data that they don't care if anyone reads?

If they don't change atom:updated, then the implication is that they 
don't want to bug subscribers by saying "hey, guess what--this entry is 
changed" if they've already read the entry, but the entry should still 
be updated in the caches of intermediaries so that the modified entry 
will go out to people who haven't yet seen it, or to people for whom 
the entry is still in the sliding window.

> 	Personally, I think that the atom:updated is simply too confusing
> and should be replaced by the much simpler and more easily understood
> atom:modified. I am not convinced that there are a usefully large 
> number of
> cases in which the publisher will change and republish an entry yet 
> not wish
> to "bring this change to the attention of subscribers."

If I make a spelling change, a grammatical adjustment, etc. (which is 
not an uncommon occurrence), and have the option of not bugging people 
who've already read the entry by hilighting the trivial change, I will 
certainly take advantage of that option.  If I subscribe to a feed in 
which trivial changes like that ARE hilighted, I will be VERY likely to 
unsubscribe.  I've unsubscribed in the past from feeds that were 
otherwise exactly what I wanted, but often had entries that kept 
showing up as new due to trivial changes.  I doubt that this is an edge 
case.