CommentsTrack - Specification
Current version: 0.2
Document History
Version..Date.....Name...............Changes
0.1......17Aug04..Jan Piotrowski.....First Draft
0.2......19Aug04..Helge Fahrnberger..Small changes, Workarounds added
Abstract
CommentsTrack can help you to keep track of all comments that you post anywhere on the web and of what people reply. It creates one simple RSS or atom feed that you can easily monitor with your favorite feed reader. It is a technology aimed to make your life in the web and blogosphere easier and more comfortable, and to make discussions in weblogs more lively. The CommentsTrack technology might also be used to track discussions in discussion board software (BBS) or to monitor discussions without having participated yet.
Terminology
- User: Person that reads and comments to a weblog entry
- RemoteBlog: Software that runs that weblog
- Thread: Comments / discussion about a weblog entry
- PingScript: Software that can connect to CT-Script
- CT-Script: Software that can handle pings/connections from PingScript and modify CT-Feed
- CT-Feed: Feed containing all threads, modified by CT-Script
- FeedReader: Reader to read syndication-feeds (e.g. RSS/Atom). Software or webservice like bloglines.com
Functional Goals and Aims
- A feed aggregating all replies to comments User has posted anywhere on the web
- Simple usage also usable for non-geeks
Technical Goals and Aims
- Simple specifications to make implementation easy
- Independence of platform and feed aggregation technology, built on HTTP 1.1
- Compatibility / implementability with all major weblog and BBS software systems
- Free and Open Source
Notes
- Output (format and design of CT-feed) doesn't matter yet, can be changed by later easily
- Related to and inspired by technologies such as trackback or pingback
How it works, simple Overview
- Form-field is being added to comments-forms of RemoteBlog
- User pastes his personal CT-Script-URI into that form-field
- RemoteBlog uses PingScript to inform this CT-Script-URI about new comments
- CT-Script publishes these comments into a personal CT-Feed and stores them in database
- CT-Feed can be consumed by User via FeedReader
Technical Details
- Unique identifier for CT-Script to allocate data in CT-Feed: permalink, should be unique and persistent
- Transmission of comments between RemoteBlog and CT-Scrip: undecided, see below
- All further technical details depend on transmission solution
Problems
1. Load
Many comments -> many CT-Script-URIs -> many pings -> takes very long to post comment -> lag
example: 150 comments, 1 seconds per comment + 2 failing CT-Script-URIs per 30 seconds
Problem Workaround Approaches
Based on
Recent page revisions in XML format (all pages)