Re: Media RSS Brokeness

Does anybody have a big stick with a nail in it?


--- In [email protected], "James Holderness" <j4_james@...> 
wrote:
> A lot more. If you look at the web page archives in the Wayback 
Machine, 
> you'll see it's been broken for years - they just change the way in 
which 
> it's broken from time to time.
> 
> The first date for which the Wayback Machine has an entry for the 
spec is 
> October 1, 2005. At that point the namespace was given as 
> http://search.yahoo.com/mrss (no trailing slash), meaning it was 
already 
> "broken" back then. At that time, though, the choice of URI may 
have been 
> deliberate.
> 
> By November 24, 2005 the namespace had been changed to 
> http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/ (with a trailing slash). Although 
there was no 
> mention of this change in "Change Notes", I believe it was 
deliberate, and 
> that was intended to be the official URI from then on.
> 
> Unfortunately they only managed to keep the documentation correct 
for about 
> 2 months.
> 
> By February 1, 2006 it was broken again. In the introduction to the 
spec, 
> the namespace was documented as http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/ (with 
a 
> trailing slash), but all the examples used a URI of 
> http://search.yahoo.com/mrss (no trailing slash).
> 
> Then in May 23, 2007, after months of complaints, someone decided 
to try and 
> fix the problem by getting the examples and the text to match. 
> Unfortunately, whoever made the changes didn't know what the 
correct URI was 
> supposed to be (who can blame them) and set everything to 
> http://search.yahoo.com/mrss (no trailing slash).
> 
> At this point, I don't think the spec can be fixed. Both forms of 
the 
> namespace are widely used, and even if Yahoo! eventually gets 
around to 
> updating the documentation, there will still be other tutorials all 
over the 
> Internet telling people to use the wrong URI.
> 
> IMO, the best thing to do is acknowledge that the spec is broken. 
Document 
> both URIs that are in use so clients will know what to expect, but 
recommend 
> feed publishers use the "correct" one (whichever they decide that 
to be).
> 
> Regards
> James
>




 
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