John,

I'm having a difficult time understanding the question. :|

AFAIK, RSS feeds are keyed off of creation date and not mod_date. Editing an existing post shouldn't queue it up as an RSS "update"?

Am I missing something?

Yep, every time I edit a published post, it updates Bloglines and Sage and Netvibes.

Using Sparkle!!

John,

I'm not familiar with any of those services, but I've created a Netvibe account and subscribed to your RSS feed (0.92) and it shows 5 items, which appear to be in "date-created" order.

I've marked them as "read".

If you don't mind, can you edit an older entry and I'll see what happens?

Thx.

Bloglines..and Sage. Netvibes hasn't updated yet

LOL, of course, the ONE i signed up for. :lol:

So, what happens? It doesn't show the older item you edited as "new", right? Just takes the "latest" post and marks it like it was never read (as if it were brand new)? Or do ALL of the 5 you have show as new?

The problem I see with your suggestion of a tick box to keep RSS from updating, after editing a post, is that RSS isn't "updated" in an active sense (unlike the pinging, which IS active). So there's nothing really to "turn off".

The way it works (to my way of thinking and I'm by no means a feed expert) is that aggregator services (like netvibes, bloglines and such), go and check the feed links (whichever flavor RSS, RDF, Atom, etc) every so often (feedburner does it every 30 min or so) ... those calls run the associated feed.php files in the xmlsrv dir and (essentially) pull the the last (user set) number of blog entries, generating XML format for the services to render.

Now ... I've been looking at 0.92 RSSv1 and thinking (this file HAS to change, in order for a service to "think" that something is NEW). I don't see how THIS file could change, as there's no date or anything in it that would say ... "hey, I've changed".

BUT ... looking at your RSSv2, I see there is a <pubDate> tag.

So, two questions: (1) What flavor feed are you using (RDF, RSS0.92, RSS2.0 or Atom)? and (2) Have a look at the pubDate/time in the feed link on your page for (1) BEFORE and AFTER you edit some post ... see if they're different.

(I'm using v1.6 and don't have Sparkle loaded to test with).

I'm thinking that if the PubDate changes, then the services may be keying in on that and "thinking" that the post has been modified or republished (is "newer") and marks it as such?

Weird.

PS - I've now subscribed to all 4 flavors and marked all as "read", so if you want to try another older post edit, I might be able to determine if it's happening to ALL feeds, or just certain ones.

I'll have a peek and see what I can find.

I'll also do a file compare in case some older modification is getting in the way.
Thanks for the help and trouble you have gone to.

Here's a little reward
http://mute.rigent.com/index.php?ladat=2006-06-28

Hmmm ... I'll have to look more into photoblogging as a slide show option.

In case you didn't get my PS edit:

PS - I've now subscribed to all 4 flavors (At NetVibes) and marked all as "read", so if you want to try another older post edit, I might be able to determine if it's happening to ALL feeds, or just certain ones.

Ive hit edit again..
Bloglines have posted an item that may explain them.. the rest, I'm at a loss.

As we continue to develop new features, small and large, we also make necessary improvements to existing systems. Expanding our support for the Atom 1.0 syndication standard is the latest of these. You may notice duplicate posts coming from atom feeds as we make the switch from the old to the new atom parser. But have no fear, these duplicates will fade away and soon be a distant memory.

None of the 4 feed I have for wow-factor, on NetVibes, shows anything as "new" ... if that helps?

(lol ... though you only posted 3 minutes ago and I should prolly give it a tad longer than that) :lol:

An hour (or so?) has passed since your "edit again" was sent and still, on NetVibes, none of the 4 feeds (RSS1, RDF, RSS2 or Atom) show anything as "new".

I'm going to venture a guess and say, at this point, that it seems to be a service-related issue, rather than an XML-generation problem.

If it doesn't sort itself out, or if you get any new information, post it here and we'll have another go!

My host said that they had been playing with server settings all week and could well have been sending "refreshes". I think this may be the answer as the server updates were completed app 8/10 hours ago.

LOL ... I hate it when my host provider does something (like upgrade PHP or something) and all I notice is "bad behavior" when it ALL used to work fine! >:-< (Wish they had a changelog I could check against or something).

Thanks for the update. :)