Why RSS Feeds Aren't Reliable

[coprime]

I'm making this post so I can add image screenshots and explanations without needing to have large images in a comment. This is specifically in response to OTW claiming that complaints about how feeds can have issues is something for the people relying on those feeds to figure out and fix individually and that it is not an issue-at-large for everyone subscribed to the feed.

So I thought I'd show my screenshots! Images and descriptions under the cut.

Here is the start of the issue that has recently occurred with ao3_news_feed:



Here we can clearly see a post from scans_daily from Wednesday, June 28th, 2023 1:09PM immediately followed by a post from ao3_news_feed from Monday, June 26th, 2023 2:58PM. Already, if you are familiar with Scans_Daily this screenshot should be odd-looking. Posts on Dreamwidth are in reverse chronological order, so the most recent post is at the top, the second most recent post is below that one, etc. down the Reading Page. If ao3_news_feed were behaving correctly, that would mean that there were 0 posts from Tuesday, June 27th because otherwise they would have been displayed between the two posts in this screenshot.

Except! Scans_Daily is a decently active community and has multiple posts daily. There were, in fact, 5 posts for Tuesday, June 27th. I will admit that posts can be posted so that they don't display on subscribers' reading pages (just check the "Don't show on Reading pages" ticky box when you make a post), but Scans_Daily doesn't do that. I can post screenshots of those 5 missing posts if there's doubt, but I promise I had multiple accounts (not just Scans_Daily!) to whom I'm subscribed post on Tuesday, June 27th and that those posts show up on my Reading Page, just further back because they're in the order they're supposed to be.

So, okay, the Monday, June 26th post from ao3_news_feed is appearing out of order from where it should be. After that post comes 4 more out-of-order posts from ao3_news_feed dated Saturday, June 24th, 2023 12:02AM; Wednesday, June 21st, 2023 4:08PM; Monday, June 19th, 2023 12:20AM; and Thursday, June 15th, 2023 5:54PM all right in a row with no other posts between them. I didn't bother to screenshot the posts from the 24th, 21st, or 19th because I think my point is amply made by my screenshot of the post from the 15th, included below:



This one's a little tougher to read because I had to shrink my magnification down in order to get both dates visible on the screen at the same time, but it's still legible. At the top, there's a post from ao3_news_feed dated Thursday, June 15th, 2023 5:54PM and directly below it is a post from fandomcalendar dated Wednesday, June 28th, 2023 12:44AM. And, because Dreamwidth displays posts on the Reading Page in reverse chronological order, we know that Dreamwidth thinks that ao3_news_feed's post from Thursday, June 15th is more recent than FandomCalendar's post from Wednesday, June 28th.

Very clearly something strange is going on! Dreamwidth is telling me that those 5 posts from ao3_news_feed occurred on Wednesday, June 28th between 12:44AM and 1:09PM, even though none of the dates on those posts are even for Wednesday, June 28th.

I would bet dollars to doughnuts that every person subscribed to ao3_news_feed experienced the same thing. It's not an issue with the journal style. I can reload my Reading Page in a different style and the issue is still there. I could mess with styles and CSS all day long and it wouldn't change these 5 posts being inserted onto my Reading Page in an order that they're not supposed to be in. There is nothing I, or any other user subscribed to ao3_news_feed, can do to make those posts show up on the Reading Page where they're supposed to be.

It's insulting every time OTW insists that people bringing up issues with RSS feeds don't know what they're talking about. Feeds can have issues. They're nice, but they're not reliable. In this case, ao3_news_feed hiccuped and for some reason now the 5 most recent posts are being displayed out of order on the Reading Page of everyone subscribed to it. I find it especially insulting that OTW keeps insinuating that the only reason someone would have an issue with an RSS feed is because of either their own ignorance ("Additionally, some who expressed misgivings about feed function might not be accustomed to their functions via Dreamwidth. We recommend fans subscribe to the following feed to get some familiarity with feed functionality.") or their own incompetence ("With the feed being displayed without issues on its own page, I would suspect it to be a DW issue - some skins have bugs that mess with the display.").

Edited to add: I'm leaving the screenshots as-is so that it's very clear this is exactly what I'm seeing on my Reading Page. Scans_Daily and FandomCalendar just happen to be the two communities whose public posts surround this fiasco on my Reading Page.

Comments

[cesy]

You can also see a problem at https://ao3-news-feed.dreamwidth.org/ where every post is there twice.

For comparison, https://xkcd-feed.dreamwidth.org/ does not have this problem - each post only appears once.