We're planning on doing just that: communicating more, monitoring the API via a third-party service from a variety of locales, and providing better documentation. We've got more developer support hires lined up, and more.
Thanks for the list of what you'd like to see, and thanks for bearing with us. On Tue, Sep 15, 2009 at 12:13, zippy_monster <alex.zep...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Sep 15, 11:04 am, Alex Payne <a...@twitter.com> wrote: > >> Please understand that the denormalized lists are currently provided >> to developers on a best-effort basis. For the vast majority of Twitter >> applications, this data isn't necessary. A specialized class of >> applications need this data, and we're doing our best to provide it. > > As a developer, implementation details are mainly a recreational > interest. My primary concern is the end result (does it work? or > not?). Excuses and apologies are nice, but not a substitute for more > explicit testing and communication. So far I've run into two > disruptive changes: > > - Today, for a brief period, API queries were returning twice the > number of responses they should have. Instead of showing the proper 6 > DMs, I was getting 12 back. Oops. > > - Previously, the way POST + OAuth requests were being handled > changed. The code I was using (MGTwitterEngine + various OAuth hacks) > was sending GET arguments with every request (even POST). For a while > this worked, but in the past few weeks this broke with no warning. > Yeah, that was sloppy client-side code, but the documentation was > silent on this, and certainly the error message (invalid/re-used > nonce) was not terribly helpful as a proper nonce was being generated > each time. > > Additionally, Internet rumblings about how OAuth was handled lend > credence to the idea that the API just isn't terribly stable... both > from the idea that you're pushing people to use what is officially > considered an experimental API, and that it's being treated as an > experimental API (OAuth specific outages for instance). > > Or, the current pagination problems. The threads I see here seem to > all be started by API consumers. What's missing from the picture is > an announcement from Twitter that some feature is broken. That smacks > of really poor (well, non-existent) communication. > > So, yeah, after spending time tracking down the above problems, and > reading general internet rumblings, my gut feeling is that the Twitter > API simply isn't terribly stable. Specifically, I wonder how serious > Twitter is about testing things in a non-production environment. If I > had to propose a solution, it would be to keep a more explicit list > (blog, regular group postings, whatever) of what changes... even if > you think it's insignificant. When something breaks, no matter how > small, a formal announcement would be great. If such a thing exists, > I sure don't know about it. > > The API blog hasn't been updated since July. The third hit on Google > for "twitter api" is a post to this group begging for documentation. > The API changelog is out there, but it too seems like it's not > consistently updated. > -- Alex Payne - Platform Lead, Twitter, Inc. http://twitter.com/al3x
