Cross-Site Unique ID Formats? And ID Debating...

[Morbus Iff <morbus@disobey.com>]

>> Again, does our current purpose scale well? Can we editorialize one million
>> rss feeds, checking for all possible aliases, defects, user idiocies, and
>> so forth, while still giving ourselves time to read the damn feeds that
>> we're programming software for?
>
>It certainly may not scale, but even if it doesn't it's something that's
>doable and useful now, and can hopefully grow into something that _can_
>scale. 

Ok. Say we all agree that "major providers of rss feed listings will use a unique id architecture", then how should we handle it? Say XMLtree wants to keep their list going, I want to make a list, and Barr wants to keep his individual list going.

How, how, how do we combine them all together into one massive list? We certainly don't need duplication of effort. And what if Winer doesn't want to jump in? How do we handle those who don't join? Do we?

What if we did unique IDs based off "epoch seconds,list id", such that if there were three providers numbered 3, 4, and 5 and they each added a channel at the same exact moment in time, it'd be something like "91374293,3" and "91374293,4" and "91374293,5"?

I still, to be honest, don't see any compelling reason to use unique ids. Sure, it may be good *now*, when the world is relatively small and meager, but why waste the time worrying about them if they're *only good enough* for this point in time?

The words "hopefully grow into something that can scale" do not put me at ease. We shouldn't hope something scales, we should make damn well that it does. 'Member Gnutella? (and I'll ignore any comments about "well, hey, he said it would only handle 300 hosts")...

-- 
Morbus Iff

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