On Sat, 29 May 2004 11:16:28 +0200, Mathias Schindler <neubau(a)presroi.de>
wrote:
At de.wikipedia, we are using the MediaWiki namespace
for things like
current events.
Has anyone tried to export those parts into a rss/rdf
file, i.e.
[[MediaWiki:Hauptseite Aktuelle Ereignisse]] on de or [[MediaWiki:In the
news]] on en?
I think there might be some useful purpose for this
file for external
web sites and this could also help wikipedia.
[... de-lurking, since I have worked on various RSS and Atom syndication
projects before.]
1. Not to start a holy war or anything, but if you are going to be
syndicating, you really should use Atom. Most major newsfeed readers
support it; those that don't yet, most likely will soon, and in the
interim people can run scripts which convert Atom to RSS using a simple
XSLT transformation. Atom is *more* flexible, has a single standard
(rather than 9 different, ad hoc, and incompatible versions--see
<http://diveintomark.org/archives/2004/02/04/incompatible-rss>), and is
much more flexible.
2. That said, you may very well *not* want to do any syndication on
WikiPedia at the moment, whatever the format. Why? Well, because delivery
mechanisms for syndicated feeds are currently *terrible*. WikiPedia has
enough load-related performance problems as it is; imagine the same
situation, except with a significant portions of your users reloading one
page over and over again every 10 minutes to see if something has changed
(most newsreaders *default* to polling somewhere around every 5-15
minutes).
-C
--
Charles Johnson <technophilia(a)radgeek.com>
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