Comments RSS feed provides stale Last-Modified header

[redsweater]

Either since updating to WP 2.0 or 2.0.1, I have noticed a problem with my RSS comments feed:

​http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/?feed=comments-rss2

My news aggregator (NetNewsWire) has failed to notice changes to this feed's contents, even though the raw contents are verifably different if I load them from the command line with curl.

I traced the problem to a stale "Last-Modifed:" header in the HTTP response to the above URL. No matter how much time passes or how many comments are posted, the date stays the same. It seems that modifying any *post* (not comment) will cause the Last-Modified header for the feed to be updated. So whenever I update my blog, a slew of comments come through the separate comments feed. This is a less than ideal behavior for my readers, especially when there are lulls in my regular posting, but comment activity is continuing at a reasonable clip.

It seems that the Last-Modified data included in the comments HTTP response should correspond to the date of the last comment posted, not to the last entry posted.

I just noticed that this is already reported as ticket #137. Interestingly enough, the oldest bug in the system :)

​http://trac.wordpress.org/ticket/137

Sorry for the duplicate.