I understand and agree about the long delay in getting reviews of feeds, as well as some system performance issues. A couple points, though:
> I can vouch for the quality and validity of the feeds since I am > a developer and wrote the software that delivers the channels, > as well as authored the content. I'm a developer too, and I have feeds that are generated by software I wrote, but that doesn't mean that I can't make mistakes and that I can't accidentally write software that makes mistakes. The reality is that people -- including programmers -- make mistakes, and they don't always see their mistakes. That's why in professional software development, there is a third-party review to catch the mistakes. And as much as we developers might gripe and groan about the QA guy/gal not knowing what they're doing, they can still prevent some bad stuff from getting to the end user. In software development teams, it's not uncommon (to put it mildly) to have peer review even before the QA stage. So why should RSS feeds be different, when (by their nature) they have to be pretty sound technically to even be useful? > I've also seen a growing pattern of people coming to this list to > ask other reviewers to approve their feeds for them. Which, to me, > doesn't seem all that much different from asking the teacher if > you can go to the bathroom. I don't follow this analogy... It's an accepted way to get a feed out of the queue, without bypassing the peer review. Although I guess the analogy could prove my point -- asking the teacher to use the bathroom prevents the chaos of students constantly entering and leaving the room, and asking others to review your feeds prevents the chaos of having unqualified feeds reach the "approved" state. > Why does it have > to be so slow, so complicated, so tedious to add a feed to Syndica8? > I don't get it. I can, and have, gone to other services, filled out a form, > confirmed I was a real person and not some bot, uploaded > an OPML of my content, been approved, watched their bot > come around and collect the feeds, and have them available > to subscribers in the space of an hour or less. Well, your feeds are also available to potential subscribers on Syndic8 pretty soon after you've added them to the database, if people search for feeds in any state, which is possible. I believe the default search is for "Syndicated" feeds -- that means "these feeds have passed a validity check" (not a "value/quality" check, just validity, whether it's "Here's why I named my dog Spot" or "Here's another way to use XML"). As a default, that makes sense to me -- give me the best (in this case, most likely to be valid) first, then let me explore the untested waters if I feel the need. Anyway, I really think the peer review process should not be bypassed just to get feeds *approved* faster. It eliminates the meaning/value of having a way to mark feeds that have been checked and "passed" by someone other than the feed owner. And the "Syndicated" status is not required in order for people to find your feeds, as long as they're aware they can look for feeds without regard to their status indicators. Could the search process be made more intuitive, and made to highlight that capability? Sure -- but the fact that it's not is not reason to abandon the value of peer review. -- Stuart Whitmore [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.just-stuart.com/ Donkey list: 274472, 312203, 356917, 383781 ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Has someone you know been affected by illness or disease? Network for Good is THE place to support health awareness efforts! http://us.click.yahoo.com/Rcy2bD/UOnJAA/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/
