Opened 4 years ago

Last modified 2 years ago

#9611 new enhancement

Make comment feeds fail with an error code when comments are closed

Reported by: Denis-de-Bernardy Owned by:
Priority: normal Milestone: Future Release
Component: Feeds Version: 2.8
Severity: minor Keywords: has-patch dev-feedback
Cc:

Description

This is mostly a suggestion as an enhancement.

When you close a post's comments and pings, it should no longer output an rss feed. Instead, it should return a not found (404) or gone (410) error and die.

Likewise, if all posts and pages on a site disallow comments and pings, the comments feeds should not be broadcast, and should return the same error code.

Thoughts?

Attachments (1)

9611.diff (1.6 KB) - added by solarissmoke 2 years ago.

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Change History (9)

was meaning: the comment feeds should not be advertised.

Does returning a feed entry saying "Comment was disabled" more reasonable? Current subscribers of the comments feed will see that message too.

*Does --> Is

might work too, but it should ideally return an error code alongside. that way, if a search engine is pulling the feed with any regularity, it'll stop hammering the server.

410 Gone should not be used since feed readers will stop updating the feed after receiving 410 and we don't know if comment is disabled permanently. 404 Not Found is a choice but I am afraid that current subscribers may not know what has happened to the feed.

Personally, 410 is exactly what I'd want it to be on my own site: Something that stops the feed reader at the gate on comments feeds for old posts, where the comments are closed.

It's annoying to have feed readers who are knocking your site's individual posts and pages' feeds when comments are closed. It's just a waste of bandwidth... :-)

  • Keywords needs-patch added; 2nd-opinion removed
  • Milestone changed from 2.9 to Future Release

comment:8 in reply to: ↑ 6   solarissmoke2 years ago

  • Keywords has-patch dev-feedback added; needs-patch removed

Replying to Denis-de-Bernardy:

It's annoying to have feed readers who are knocking your site's individual posts and pages' feeds when comments are closed. It's just a waste of bandwidth... :-)

I agree! Here is a patch to (a) stop advertising the comment feed and (b) 410 the feed when comments are closed.

However, I feel like not everyone will be happy to implement this...

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