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Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 17:55:55 +0200
Message-ID: <c7fc82820910270855h5b0fcd43t3f67123cdd1c014c@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Actions, tags, and the public timeline
From: Vassil Dichev <vdichev@apache.org>
To: esme-dev@incubator.apache.org
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> I disagree, or rather I think we're talking about two separate issues.
>
> 1. My current problem is that actions always tag the messages they
> create with something like "Action_123455". I think they shouldn't do
> this, as it is meaningless to an end-user and pollutes the tag cloud.
> I'm not sure what the use-case of this approach is even for other
> actions, as each one is different and seemingly unpredictable.

Actions don't explicitly tag the messages. The problem is the
long-standing bug ESME-26- URLs are parsed incorrectly (hash sign
breaks the url), so the anchor is interpreted as a hashtag. I had some
doubts if hashes would clash with URL parsing, but since this bug
seems to be popular lately and pops up in all places, I think it's
high time for me to try to fix it. (I'm aware I've promised other
stuff but not delivered yet...)

> 2. You issue seems to be that certain automation users (or actions?)
> ought not to appear in the public timeline. I agree with this need,
> but I'm not sure how best to do this. Some actions should show up in
> the public timeline. Maybe we need a concept that is neither a true
> user or an action, but is instead an action that is started by and
> owned by a particular user and which pulls in external events from RSS
> feeds. For the time being, I think we're ok. The Jira items in the
> public timeline are kind of annoying, but really only for me because
> they are repopulated when the server restarts.

Should we eliminate the public timeline altogether? I don't find much
use of it either on Twitter or in ESME.

I think we must be careful with adding too many concepts or things
will become too brittle. For instance, imagine that we turn generated
actions into some other type of message and we're suddenly not able to
filter them from the personal timeline, which benefits keeping the
personal timeline nice and clean.

What you're offering actually sounds a lot like having the message
generated by the action put in a specific pool. This is the only type
of message which does not show in the public timeline. Then your
followers will not be able to see these messages, though.

And by the way the RSS action *is* "owned by a particular user" and
"pulls in external events from RSS feeds" (did you mean entries
instead of events?). I don't see what is the difference from what you
want to promote- an action which is not an action? Would it be
created/edited in the normal actions page or on a separate page?

Vassil