This one is entirely toolkit related. We've seen this sort of thing from just about all content producing tools at one time or another. They all go through some growing pains as their developers learn to appreciate some of the more nuanced aspects of the various specs involved. Encoding, transport, compression, language, well-formedness and the like are all common stumbling blocks most tools trip up on. Hopefully the folks involved with wordpress will recognize the value of making content that doesn't fail in meeting usefulness and spec requirements.
Also note that many times things like this are version related. While the developers of a given product might be slow to implement fixes, when they do it's then up to the consumers of the tool to actually install and start using it. This appears to be the case with Wordpress and the header errors. You want to reach out to the content producer directly and suggest they upgrade their copy of wordpress. So we balance between recognizing when a tool itself is bad and when it's operator error. When we seen that a tool is at fault it's usually better to reach out to that tool developer directly and help them fix the issues. No sense in tormenting the content producers when they can't make code changes (even if they do have source). So when you find a bug that looks like it's tool related consider contacting the tool developers first to see what they've got in the pipeline to address it. If they're 'uncooperative' and most have been VERY cooperative (after all, we're all helping them bug-check for free here) but some have required a bit of 'prodding'. In those cases it becomes a powerful motivational tool to have the content producers themselves start 'beating up' the developers seeking the necessary fixes. This is generally the 'big stick' part of the 'speak softly and carry...' method and it's generally only chosen in really problematic cases. The goal here is to get better content, not to make any one tool look any more or less worse than the others. But pressure, applied judiciously, helps advance the cause of seeking better content. Should any find a tool that's clearly being bad about handling creating proper content it's always a good idea to post messages here to the mailing seeking assistance. But if you've got an "in" with the developers feel free to work the diplomatic channels. Turn to the mailing list when needed. Thus it does require the reviewers to learn a bit more about not just the format of an RSS (or Atom) feed but also recognize the process involved in creating and serving it up on the web. There are many tools involved in the process and each of them can introduce their own set of complications and errors. This is why we have all those tabs on a feed's info page. Each of them seeks to shed light on its own set of issues related to a feed. Things like the Poll Summary tab can help point out a server or network that has problems. Neither of which are directly related to the tools used. But a server problem might well be related to how the feed is created. A tool that burns up a lot of CPU to create a feed dynamically will certainly affect poll delivery times. It might be competely valid in it's content but if it takes forever to dowload it'll start causing problems for readers on things like slow networks (cell, dial-up, WiFi, etc...) Sometimes a feed being broken goes beyond the format specs. Anyway, let the content producer know there's an update to wordpress that will help fix it. Mark it for repair meanwhile and let us know if/when the feed gets fixed. -Bill Kearney > Is this just by chance that I'm seeing so many of these now, > and/or is it just my perception that this is happening now > more than before? Or is there some external reason for this? > When I've thought to look at the toolkit, it's always been > WordPress, but that could just be a coincidence because of > the large number of WP feeds out there. But maybe it is > toolkit/version specific? Or a problem with the validator? > > I'll keep an eye on this more to see if the toolkit > correlation holds true, but in the meantime I'd be curious if > others have noticed the same thing. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> What would our lives be like without music, dance, and theater? Donate or volunteer in the arts today at Network for Good! http://us.click.yahoo.com/Tcy2bD/SOnJAA/cosFAA/IRislB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> If you're getting "too much mail" then send a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (this will tell it to stop sending you mail) To change your membership use THIS WEB PAGE: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/syndic8/join (here you can set your mail to digest, no mail or LEAVE the list) To find more info about Syndicated XML newsfeeds visit http://www.syndic8.com/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndic8/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
