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His homepage has a `link rel="alternate"` meta and that's all that matters. Original link should be preserved, but I disagree with you on the moral of appendin

His homepage has a `link rel="alternate"` meta and that's all that matters. Original link should be preserved, but I disagree with you on the moral of appending '&rss_ref=heyhomepage.com' to the links. It is still tracking. Besides, server-side feed aggregators have a valid reason to cache the feed and canonicalize the item url to avoid dupes.

rambambram 4y ago
An RSS icon has an important signaling function, if you ask me. Automatic discovery is good, but why not also have a textual link or icon pointing to your feed!? The original link to the feed is preserved for my users to click on. My system - in use with the user - pointing the user to someone else's website accompanied by a GET var containing the user's own URL is not tracking. The end website can also know that info from the HTTP referrer. It's a very crude implementation of a webmention, in a sense. Because it's not necessarily about the linking website, but about telling someone's RSS feed is in use!
- derekzhouzhen 4y ago
  > but why not also have a textual link or icon pointing to your feed!? Sure. I was only providing my perspective, the perspective of a RSS feed aggregator writer. To me, automatic discovery is more important than an icon. I am not sure you and I are talking about the same thing. I am against appending random query string to an otherwise perfectly fine url because it adds to the burden of the feed aggregator if it wants to de-duplicate the links gathered from various sources. Of course you are free to append anything to the URLs on your website for any purposes.
  - rambambram 4y ago
    > I am not sure you and I are talking about the same thing. I am against appending random query string to an otherwise perfectly fine url because it adds to the burden of the feed aggregator if it wants to de-duplicate the links gathered from various sources. The appended query string is only added to links in my system, not to any public feed. Otherwise, I agree with you.

rambambram 4y ago

An RSS icon has an important signaling function, if you ask me. Automatic discovery is good, but why not also have a textual link or icon pointing to your feed!? The original link to the feed is preserved for my users to click on. My system - in use with the user - pointing the user to someone else's website accompanied by a GET var containing the user's own URL is not tracking. The end website can also know that info from the HTTP referrer. It's a very crude implementation of a webmention, in a sense. Because it's not necessarily about the linking website, but about telling someone's RSS feed is in use!

derekzhouzhen 4y ago
> but why not also have a textual link or icon pointing to your feed!? Sure. I was only providing my perspective, the perspective of a RSS feed aggregator writer. To me, automatic discovery is more important than an icon. I am not sure you and I are talking about the same thing. I am against appending random query string to an otherwise perfectly fine url because it adds to the burden of the feed aggregator if it wants to de-duplicate the links gathered from various sources. Of course you are free to append anything to the URLs on your website for any purposes.
- rambambram 4y ago
  > I am not sure you and I are talking about the same thing. I am against appending random query string to an otherwise perfectly fine url because it adds to the burden of the feed aggregator if it wants to de-duplicate the links gathered from various sources. The appended query string is only added to links in my system, not to any public feed. Otherwise, I agree with you.