Microsoft Outlook 2007 has a strategy for dealing with blog posts in RSS items that are updated: Ignore them. Says Michael Affronti of Microsoft:

If a blogger or content publisher modifies a post and wants their readers to be sure they see it again, they should follow the best practice of re-posting the new content. This will create a new GUID and cause Outlook (and other aggregators that follow this delete model) to see it as a new item and download it as appropriate.

While the “one-use-GUID” approach could be argued as the “correct” way of handling feed items, I don’t know of any of the popular aggregators who are willing to be so draconian as to ignore updates. Nathan Weinberg of WebProNews weighs in with an scathing critique:

With all due respect, I don’t want to hear about “best practice”. Many, many bloggers issue updates to their posts, as they should, and rely on the RSS readers pushing through the updated items. Being able to update vital news stories brings accountability and transparency…. Bloggers aren’t going to change the way they post based on how Outlook 2007 treats previously read items. The technology needs to work for the medium, not try to change it.

The fact that there isn’t a crisp, clear definition of how to handle dupes/updates is another troubling ambiguity in the
frozen RSS 2.0 spec … issues like this could be thoroughly addressed in a revision of the spec, were one allowed by its creator.

Best case scenario is that the RSS Advisory Board’s profile will address this issue AND that aggregators / feed publishers will follow it. One can hope.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 10th, 2006 at 17:03 and is filed under syndication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.