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When the title of 'Un-select' a radiobutton? (and many others) was changed it showed up as a new item in my RSS reader, News Fire. Is it possible for this to be fixed and prevent the same post popping up multiple times in my RSS reader?

I understand this might be a tricky issue seeing both parts (SO and RSS readers) are doing what they are (kind of) supposed to. How could this be fixed?

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  • 3
    We'll take a look at this!
    – Jarrod Dixon
    Aug 28, 2009 at 1:11

3 Answers 3

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+100

The RSS entry for this question is:

   <entry>
        <id>http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18051/prevent-title-edits-to-spawn-a-new-rss-post</id>
        <title type="text">Prevent title edits to spawn a new RSS post</title>
        <category scheme="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/bug/tags" term="rss"/><category scheme="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/bug/tags" term="edits"/><category scheme="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/bug/tags" term="possible-bug"/><category scheme="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/bug/tags" term="bug"/>
        <author><name>joshhunt</name></author>
        <link rel="alternate" href="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18051/prevent-title-edits-to-spawn-a-new-rss-post" />

        <published>2009-08-27T09:52:27Z</published>
        <updated>2009-08-27T09:52:27Z</updated>
        <summary type="html">
            When the title of....
        </summary>
    </entry>

As you can see there is an id field on the top that includes the complete url, with the title. If we can have the "id" field just include the question id (possibly with the domain in front), this should not show up as a new post in RSS-readers.

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  • I was thinking about this. Would this in any way effect the Google-juice of the pages? Does Google even browse the RSS feeds? Would having a 'redirect' URL which would redirect from /questions/rss/18051 to /questions/12051 be a possible solution?
    – Josh Hunt
    Aug 27, 2009 at 12:23
  • thanks for the tip -- this was implemented!
    – Jeff Atwood
    Aug 31, 2011 at 7:13
  • Thank you for your comment, two years later :)
    – Espo
    Oct 1, 2011 at 11:09
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Ok, we are switching RSS to use the new /q/1234 format for all <id> fields involving questions:

 <entry>
    <id>http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/18051</id>
    <title type="text">Prevent title edits to spawn a new RSS post</title>
    <category scheme="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/bug/tags" term="rss"/><category scheme="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/bug/tags" term="edits"/><category scheme="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/bug/tags" term="possible-bug"/><category scheme="http://meta.stackoverflow.com/feeds/tag/bug/tags" term="bug"/>
    <author><name>joshhunt</name></author>
    <link rel="alternate" href="http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/18051/prevent-title-edits-to-spawn-a-new-rss-post" />

    <published>2009-08-27T09:52:27Z</published>
    <updated>2009-08-27T09:52:27Z</updated>
    <summary type="html">
        When the title of....
    </summary>
</entry>
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  • This has the side effect of causing some RSS readers to treat all feeds as completely new. While this is an unavoidable side-effect, it maybe worthwhile for you guys to keep an eye on the various community Metas for users scratching their heads.
    – Willie Wong
    Aug 31, 2011 at 11:47
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Wouldn't it make sense for the RSS feed to include only the stub link (ie, without the title appended), since that works just as well for loading a given question?

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    indeed it would, and that is what it will now do. We also have the new-ish /q/1234 form which is what I chose to use for questions.
    – Jeff Atwood
    Aug 30, 2011 at 12:02

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