It is with regret that this morning I have pulled the Bryn Mawr Classical Review (BMCR) Most Recent Articles feed from the list of feeds aggregated by Maia Atlantis. I took this step in accordance with my own Atlantis Suppression Policy.
It would appear that every time the BMCR adds a new article, dates on all articles in the feed are updated to present. As of this writing every single entry contains an identical "pubdate" tag with the value "03:49:18, Sunday, 03 August 2008" even though some of the entries have been in the list since it was first deployed a few weeks ago. This is non-standard behavior, and has the effect of pushing all the BMCR entries, in a block, to the top of any feed reader or aggregator, ahead of other content that is actually new. And in most feed readers they will show up highlighted or bolded, to indicate "new content." The appropriate behavior is to adjust dates only on those entries that have been added or substantially changed.
The Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) Events Feed is also blocked because it is forward-dating announcements of events to the date of the event, rather than the date of the entry. For example, the current feed contains a single entry with the following pubdate: "Thu, 16 Oct 2008 07:00:00 EST". This is the event date, not the publication date of the feed entry. This is also abuse of feed entry date fields and has the effect of causing these entries to linger at the top of the aggregation list for weeks or months until the date of the event passes.
I will be contacting the editors of both resources in the hopes of resolving these technical difficulties so that their content can once again be featured in Maia Atlantis.
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