Hi

This has been a common discussion topic here and elsewhere since we've
started. A few archive searches will turn up a bunch of threads; this
one was the first...
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aggregators/message/87

Yes, despite all that discussion, little RSS "superstructure" has come
into play. Ideas have ranged from NNTP to P2P to Akami. I think
there's some very good reasons that nothing has been built, not all
because of the decentralized nature of the stakeholders.

Perhaps individual RSS readers will not end up being a problem. From
my rough impressions, the majority of RSS reading is happening in
server based systems, like Bloglines and MyYahoo, or perhaps within
corporate intranets with proxies. I wouldn't be surprised to see
client interfaces from the commercial services: wouldn't that
effectively solve the problem?

Of course, individuals aren't the only ones reading RSS. The number of
robots collecting my RSS feeds is excessive.

What seems to be really missing is a set of best practices for RSS
aggregators (of all kinds) and servers, covering etags, gzip encoding,
polling frequency, redirection, banning procedure, etc. This would be
incredibly handy to point to.

Mikel

--- In aggregators@yahoogroups.com, "Chris (QWAD Technologies)"
<chris.were@g...> wrote:
>
> Hi,
> I've built an RSS/Atom aggregator and was pleasantly surprised to
find
> this mailing list.
>
> Obviously one of the main issues facing online feed aggregators is
the
> regular polling of feeds. There are various ways to help combat this
> problem (blogs pinging, etags, last-mod headers etc.) but none of
them
> perfect or a complete solution.
> Has there been any movement or suggestion to get various aggregators
> to work together and form some type of distributed feed network?
> Such a network could have an open API allowing desktop readers to
> query for updates to feeds and web readers/aggregators could have
new
> items for registered feeds sent as they enter the central network.
> Various aggregators using the same system could have responsibility
> for a subset of feeds and only worry about updating those, while
still
> having access to all the feeds other aggregators are regularly
> updating. Down the track such a network would have a strong pulling
> power to help update the technology behind web feeds....
> There would definately be various logistical issues to work out
(with
> an open world wide communication network), but not unfeasible. It
> could be supported by some of the larger aggregators to help get off
> the ground - although I don't see that as necessary.
>
> Is anyone doing this already? If not, why not?
>
> Regards,
> Chris