255701 - RSS checks too often by default

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(MailNews Core :: Feed Reader, defect)

Description

[Shawn Oster]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)
Build Identifier: version 0.7+ (20040815)

There is already a great deal of angst around how often RSS readers check 
feeds.  The majority of feeds only update once or twice a day, with a few 
specility ones that update more often.  There is no reason to waste the 
bandwidth by checking every 45 minutes.  I suggest changing the default "Check 
for new articles every XXX minutes" from 45 to 180.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install application


Actual Results:  
Thunderbird acts as a greedy misbehaving child tugging at a feed's pant leg 
whining, "is there a new article, is there a new article, is there a new 
article...."

Expected Results:  
Acted like a more mature reader and learn some patience.

Comment 1

[Adrian Moisey]

Isnt the point of RSS to check often for a new feed?

May be its another bug. But what happens if I subscribe to a site that updates
once a week, and another that updates every half hour? What should I set the
update to?

Comment 2

[Shawn Oster]

The point of RSS is not to check often for a feed, the feed itself is the 
point.  The fact that you can have one feed reader and aggragate content from 
multiple sites in one location without having to check multiple websites.  The 
whole point is syndication, you subscribe to something and get content. 

If you actually have sites that change content that often then create a new 
RSS group with a lower check time.  Do you have a great deal of feeds that are 
really updating that often?

I've been watching the RSS/Atom/Blog/Feed Reader issues and one big one is 
that a lot of sites feel their bandwidth is being consumed much too rapidly by 
poorly designed feed readers that a) get the entire contents each time, b) 
check too often and c) ignore the feeds header telling the reader how often it 
should be checking the feed.

Comment 3

[Scott MacGregor]

I bumped it up to 100 minutes which is plenty.