

Is there a RSSlike standard for Posting? What about NNTP? - e1ven

So often when I'm reading a blog or news site (Such as news.yc) in my feedreader, I wish I could easily read the full set of comments, or easily hit reply, and leave a comment right on the site.<p>I understand that the preferred model is to then "push" my reply to my own site, but it seems easier for everyone if there were a standardized API that could be used to posting replies to the site.<p>I'd also love to be able to read the various comments, fully thread them, and the like.. The Natural solution that comes to me is integrating a NNTP-like service into the popular website hosting software.. NNTP has allowed people to post replies and read through those of others easily for decades. It supports moderated on non-moderated posting, and it's lightweight enough to be supported everywhere.<p>Are there any other solutions that are in the works? Perhaps a simpler API that's based on HTTP post, rather than Sockets?<p>One of the main advantages of NNTP, is that it already has a HUGE base of Client Support- People have NNTP readers and don't even realize it.. Outlook, Thunderbird, Etc. What other app gets a huge installed base of users, who don't even realize they already have that functionality? ;)<p>I can understand reasoning that says that Spam might be a problem, but I have a hard time agreeing with it..
For one, there's technological fixes, such as HashCash, or even server-side IP filters.. Keep in mind, since each post goes back to the original server, who is running their OWN instance of NNTP, they can blacklist however they choose.<p>It seems like there's certainly an opportunity for this sort of development, I'm just curious if anyone knows someone working on it.<p>Unfortunately, I'm too busy approaching beta on Chron X to take on any new projects, but it seems like something desperately needed, and not a difficult technological problem.
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wmf
There are extensions for RSS/Atom that allow threaded comment feeds; if you
combine this with the feed reading support in Thunderbird it might almost get
you a news-like reading experience. Probably the biggest challenge would be
getting blogs to output threaded feeds.

A standard protocol for posting comments on blogs sounds like it would be
politically difficult due to fear of comment spam (it doesn't matter whether
that fear is justified). Technically I think you could use unathenticated
AtomPub, but I don't know if anyone has implemented this use case.

As for NNTP, you can't serve it from a $7 Dreamhost account so obviously it
sucks.

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hassy
There's AtomPub -- <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_>(standard)

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engtech
Yup. It's AtomPub.

Look up Sam Ruby for more info on it. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Ruby>

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e1ven
Thanks, I hadn't seen that before. Shame on me. It still has the downside of
not having the same level of client-support that NNTP does, but given that it
doesn't require server support, I can see the appeal.

There's a couple of things in the Atom spec that seems underutilized, such as
AtomPub. When combined with the threading, that could be a viable alternative.
I wonder why So few sites support it? Momentum?

If I had the spare time (or capital to hire someone else), I'd love to see
plugins added for the popular Blog packages and forums.

I suppose I shall have to wait and see.

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abarrera
I wrote about this same issue some time ago. You can read it here
[http://alwaysnewmistakes.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/idea-
embed...](http://alwaysnewmistakes.wordpress.com/2007/12/13/idea-embedding-
rss-comments-in-a-content-rss-feed/).

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nicolas17
There's SIOC for read-only access to forums.

