New RSS feed problems

[Guhndahb]

Hello. As I mentioned in my post in the File Tracking thread, I decided to try to make extensive use out of the new per-project RSS feeds. I'm pretty sure my plan will work but I think the feeds themselves may be malformed. I want to say up front that I'm not knowledgeable about RSS from a development standpoint, my experience is purely from a user standpoint.

 

So I setup the feeds in my primary aggregator, FeedDemon. However, as new events were posted to the action log, they were not showing up in my aggregator. I later noticed that they were arriving but immediately being marked read and that they would display in random order instead of by date. At first I assumed it was a flaw w/ FeedDemon, so I put the feeds into NewsFox. NewsFox choked on them as well.

 

For one thing, the feeds do not appear to be compliant. For example, there are errors for the action log feed for The Winter Forge.

 

Additionally, and I don't know if this is because of the above problems or an additional one, but all events show up w/ no date in NewsFox. I think this is the same reason they are not showing up properly in FeedDemon as well.

 

Also, while the Latest File Updates feed shows as compliant (although w/ a recommended change), I still have date issues with it in both aggregators. Although at least this feed works for me, unlike the others. These issues appear for all three sites: TES, FO3 and DA.

 

Can anyone else verify these problems?

 

Thank you.

[Guhndahb]

I have given this problem some thought, and I have a suspicion of what is causing it, or, at least, what is causing the most pressing problem which is that new items don't show up in aggregators after marking existing items read.

 

I think it's because the individual items in the project action log RSS feeds do not have unique GUIDs. Instead the URL of the project page is used for GUID. This works (not properly but at least still functions) for the overall feeds like the update feed, but, for individual project feeds, I think it causes them to be all but non-functional.

 

For example, a new item comes in for a project with a GUID of the project's URL. One marks it read. Now, a new item comes in. Because the GUID is still the same, the aggregator thinks that it is the same item and it should still be marked read.

 

Again, I'm no RSS expert. The above is just a hypothesis. If I'm wrong, I apologize. I'll be happy to continue to try to figure out what is going wrong because I think these new project action log RSS feeds are a wonderful feature and I'd love it if this could be resolved.

 

On a different note, I'd like to suggest that, when clicking on a project link in the RSS feed, that it takes one to the action log of the project page instead of the description. But that's a minor quibble.

 

Thank you,

Greg