11

I am indeed only using newest first. The “default” sorting method is too opaque, newest first is better because it’s nice to understand exactly how items are being sorted. FAQ entry would be good to keep news on this up to date. The previous posts I’ve seen on this topic weren’t clear on whether the bad sorting was intentional or buggy or user error.

I just privately patched atom.php. Now sorting is consistent across my atom and rss2 feeds. Ideally the database would store three dates for each item: imported, published, and last updated, that way you wouldn’t have to overload the meaning of “date” in the database.

12

seems self-inflicted then

it’s pretty much score -> batch date -> updated, not sure what’s opaque about it

you need to understand that default should work for the majority of feeds, some of which have arbitrarily broken timestamps or no timestamps at all, batch date is a necessary safeguard which also serves in place of original published date which is guaranteed sane

i don’t see any point in storing published while batch date exists. it doesn’t matter for default order where batch date serves as a substitute and it’s useless with newest first, the way i think it should work (as explained above)

13

Inflicted is good in this case because default sorting was worse. I don’t want to sort by score or batch date. Editing atom.php to be consistent with rss.php fixes this problem for me.

It’s opaque because it’s not clear from the UI that score or batch date has an effect on what “default” sorting means. Without previous knowledge of what “default” means, users whose instincts are to expect “newest first” behavior by default and who don’t see that will assume it’s random or broken.

14

i think you’re assuming too much about users based on your own experiences and feeds

default provides logical (enough) sort order unless you require consecutive timestamps visible in the UI

batch timestamp and current default order has been updated sometime before 2013, going by amount of complaints since then, an absolute minority of tt-rss users ever cared about any of this enough to post here :man_shrugging:

well hopefully there’s going to be a FAQ entry soon so next time this floats up in a year or so i’ll have something to link to instead of posting about timestamps again

some UI aspects could definitely be better documented, if possible right there in the UI, because nobody would ever read the wiki or whatever. i welcome wiki contributions but it’s not like a lot of people help. well, one guy helps. that’s about it.

15

An impedance mismatch is entirely possible. I doubt most people use tt-rss to avoid having YouTube and Twitter accounts. I’m seeking to replicate those experiences. Instead, RSS has its roots in blog aggregation where the bar for exact sequential ordering is lower. Thanks for discussing

16

Another possibility is to remove the <updated/> tags from youtube or other feeds with a plugin. I think this is what I will do. The constant date changes were a bit baffling, but now I know the reason, so thank you for explanation.

17

Yeah, factoring out the discussion over how “default” sorting works, which is irrelevant here, it’s broken that sorting by “feed date” means sorting by published date for RSS2 feeds and sorting by updated date for atom feeds. It should mean the same thing regardless of feed format.

18

It’s broken that the encoding format means seeing different resolution for DVDs vs Blu-Rays. It should display the same thing regardless of disc type.

Reducing to the lowest common denominator is a sure fire way to get the worst of all worlds.

19

That’s a stretch and you know it. The point of blu-Ray is exactly its higher fidelity over previous formats. Nowhere is it specified that <updated> dates should be compared against <published> dates, nor is there any expectation of that behavior from users.

The inconsistency is not only between RSS2 feeds and atom feeds, but also between atom feeds that specify <updated> and ones that do not.

20

rss doesn’t have an updated timestamp
at least read the spec before posting your amazing insights itt

this is called having a fallback

also best part is that you’re implying that feed generators actually know how to use all those feeds correctly which is far from the truth, the whole thing is mostly just guessing anyway (which is why we have batch dates to enforce order, because feed-provided data cannot be trusted)

21

I already knew that and that’s irrelevant to the point here. RSS lacking an updated time stamp doesn’t give meaning to a comparison between updated and published timestamp. If it does, please show me how.

We’re specifically talking about the case when the user explicitly chooses to trust potentially incorrect feed data. We’re not talking about default sorting. If I choose to sort by feed dates, It should be consistent to minimize confusion. The result of comparing published and updated dates has no meaning.

22

good luck adding updated timestamp to RSS

23

Again irrelevant to what’s being discussed here. RSS lacking an updated time stamp doesn’t give meaning to a comparison between updated and published timestamp. If it does, please show me how.

24

ok i think we’re done here, this looks like bona fide autism

you’ve already changed feed parser to use your timestamps now kindly fuck off and stop bothering me

25

Well at least I don’t have Tourette’s.image

26

i hope this mod sass was worth it :man_shrugging:

27

Where I’m confused is why you wouldn’t just use YouTube’s feed…

https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<insert_channel_id_here>

I use that for several of my feeds, and see no issues with videos receiving comments mucking up the order.

28

I hope you’re not waiting for an answer…

29

I published a wiki article that details the sorting. I tried to be thorough but clear.

If it’s not straightforward enough I can clarify.

Wiki: Sorting

30

I’ve actually found the times used by YouTube to be very flakey. For example, Lani Arcade has a video posted on Nov 4, 2017 timestamped in TT-RSS as Nov 26, 2018 when it was last checked. I had never investigated the issue closely, but the feed’s published time is accurate. The video claims 2 comments with only one visible, yet the updated value keeps changing.

Since YouTube doesn’t make it clear there are RSS feeds, I’m not sure they care about their issue, and just resolved to ignore it since it’s minimally impacting. As feader pointed out, a plugin solves this if it really, really bothers someone. Just put the published value in updated and move along, unless you want to try to argue with YouTube to fix their shit.

Final Edit: I hate my post at this point, and since this is already a heated thread, I’m being overly cautious. Apologies for the moving target.