Re: [Fofredux-devel] identifying items

[Kevin <ke...@dr...>]

Katie Bechtold wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 08:41:18AM -0600, Kevin wrote:
>>
>> So, we could:
>> * do nothing.   (that feed really should have unique links)
>
> I think this is a perfectly valid option and probably a good one if
> this kind of brokenness is relatively rare.  I really don't know how
> rare it is; has anyone else here seen a feed with non-unique links?

It happens periodically.  I've seen this personally on my slashdot and
'the register' feeds.   Evan saw this on a feedburner feed for a blog.=20
The link changes without the content/title changing.

>> * add a per-feed option to use title + content hash for uniqueness
>
> I don't like this option because it relies on the user to recognize
> broken feeds that aren't very obvious: the software indicates no
> problem in updating them.  The user would have to notice that they
> haven't seen any new items from that feed in a while and understand
> the reason for it.

I don't like this either for the same reasons.  We should try our best to
do the "right thing" without the user's involvement.

>> * change everything to use title + content hash for uniqueness.
>
> That seems like the ideal option, to me.

My only concern is: would this make things worse for any feeds?  Can
anyone provide an example of a feed where it is common for the
title+content to be the same across unique items? (ex: link or guid is
different, but title+content is identical)



--=20
Kevin