When is it wrong to fix a typo? On the planet

Looks like I just ran into this problem. I was preparing to modify my feed by adding tags to all of my posts. This minuscule change caused my posts to reappear at the top of the planet again! I'm sorry everyone!

I agree with Alexandre that this behavior needs to be changed. The planet should not bump posts to the top based on the "updated" value. Bloggers should be free to fix a typo without worrying about spamming the planet. I am often forced to decide just how many typos I will tolerate before I edit a post. There have been times when I left a typo in the post, simply to prevent the post from being bumped to the top of the planet.

When a blogger edits an existing post, the planet SHOULD update the content (assuming it has not rolled off the planet) but it SHOULD NOT change its position. If the blogger has an important update that they DO want to bump to the top of the planet, they have two options:
  • Create a new post and reference the old post via a link
  • Change the "published" value to the current time
This small change would make the planet much more blogger friendly. Any opinions?

Comments

  1. Anonymous7/08/2007 4:24 AM

    Seem like a great idea... the file you should edit is located here: http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/bzr/planet/devel/trunk/planet.py

    Do a blog update when you're done, so we all know.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Unknown7/08/2007 5:26 AM

    Mine doesn't do that. Maybe you should consider wordpress or moveable type?

    Whenever I update a post (which I do occasionally) my posts don't have this issue.

    I am wondering if that's just something that happens to you alone or if its a blogger problem?

    Cheers,

    Clint

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous7/08/2007 11:29 AM

    Alexandre did nail the problem in his own comments and his patch sounds like it will do the trick.

    It's very important we don't twist the semantics of feed elements to make our feeds behave for certain clients or aggregators. It is actually their responsibility to follow intended logical behaviour.

    I'm gonna write this next bit without knowing exactly what the common blogging tools or the planet script exactly do, but I don't think it changes things. Here's what should happen so we don't break meaning:
    - changes to posts should timestamp the <updated/> element's value
    - the planet feed should mirror this change in its copy of the entry (I'm not going into what the HTML rendering does here and it's out of spec)
    - consuming user agents (desktop aggregators etc) decide what to do about that <updated/> value: bump it, mark it unread, let the user configure it, whatever.

    But here's something else important. The changes you seem to speak of (e.g. adding tags) are not actually content, but <entry/> metadata, so shouldn't affect the <updated/> value IMO. Nor are typos. Corrections and clarifications to content: yes! I think of it a bit like Wikipedia major and minor edits.

    Here we come to another requirement of the tools: your blogging tool should give you the ability to flag a change as significant or not. If it doesn't, demand it now!

    …FWIW

    ~HughBranes (yes, I've twisted the semantics of "anonymous" ;~) )

    ReplyDelete
  4. Tristan Rhodes7/08/2007 3:57 PM

    Looks like Alexandre has already submitted a patch to fix this. Let's hope it gets accepted!

    Clint, the different behavior might have to do with Atom vs RSS feeds.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lars Rasmussen7/10/2007 2:46 AM

    A related problem is that many folks falsify their time zone settings to get posted to the top of the blog. Count how many posts you see from the future what should be a Mountain Standard Time blog: http://openclue.org/ut/

    I mentioned this time travel cheat a while back & tried it myself. Setting your timezone to an offset with a greater value bumps you to the top of the planet because your posts incorrectly appear "newer" than those using an accurate time zone setting.

    ReplyDelete

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