The Achcharu Q&A - where the water gets muddied even further

General stuff

What?: Achcharu is the name given to a personal web based RSS reader. Although constructed with a specific use (and for a specific set of sites); it can be used to read the RSS feeds of practically any site.

Why? : Because none of the existing free RSS readers did exactly what I wanted. Clientside RSS readers don't work well for me because I switch between three machines frequently. Existing web based RSS readers have deficiencies or quirks in their user interface which annoy me. Also, because I like to experiment. Achcharu (or Ach) is very much a work in progress. I add features which usually make sense to me - most often in an annoyingly adhoc manner.

What's with the name?: Achcharu is the sinhalese word for a pickle (or chutney). It can also be used as a colloquial reference for a mess or mixup. Achcharu is made with various fruits and vegetables and is a savoury (or spicy) accompaniment to the main meal. It is also a melange of fruits, spices and sugar mashed into a mushy paste. Any (or all) of those definitions can be adapted to explain Achcharu's purpose - to display the mashed up contents of several Sri Lankan aggregator sites.

Is Achcharu Web 2.0 compliant?: Why, certainly. I use Ajax (I also use the detergent, does that count too?), I use more JavaScript than any accessible site should and I incorporate Web 2.0 features like tagging .. If you're a VC, please give me money. In Ach2, I commit even more crimes against accessibility and sane JavaScript use.

You're just trying to kill Kottu and zSri and put hard working Sri Lankan website overlords out of a job, aintcha?: Uh. No. I read above aggregator sites for amusement. Achcharu syndicates the RSS feeds from those sites. If they ever stopped their RSS feed generation, I doubt I'd be interested enough to personally hunt down and syndicate all the people myself. I might do; but I consider it unlikely. As an immediate: if they stopped syndicating, Achcharu would be sans content. I do however, aggregate a limited number of blogs which I like to read. Ask if you want to be aggregated directly instead of via another aggregator site. Ach is built on top of the existing aggregators; not as competition. This is just how I like to read blogs.

Ok, so why visit this place instead of another aggregator site?: No reason. Really, this form of aggregator scanning makes sense to me. It's perfectly expected that other people may prefer their information presented differently. I do not crave traffic. This is important enough to be worth repeating: I do not crave traffic. If this works for me, my job is done. If you want to build your own site: more power to you. Ask nicely and I might even help.

Site specific stuff

How do I use it?: Just like you would any other aggregator site. Click on the title to view a summary (if there is one). Click on the link to be taken straight to the blog entry. If in doubt, hover your mouse over an icon and you may get further information about what it does.

How do I tag entries?: Click on the tag icon (); type in a single tag which you think fits the story. Do not use the comma ( , ) in your tag entry. Most other punctuation is ok. Your tag may be altered by an editor. If you do not have an access key, your tag will not appear next to the story immediately. Instead, it will appear in the "Pending tags" area, where an editor will need to moderate the tag and decide if it should be allowed in or deleted. Get an access key, and you can tag and see your tag next to the story straight away. Keep your tags short and descriptive. If you need more than two words for a single tag, it's probably too long.
Then again, the first rule is that there are no rules. Some of the better tags have ignored all of these guidelines, so YMMV. Tags with a bent for humour, irony or punnery are all good, regardless of length.
If you wish to apply more than one tag to an entry (you glutton!) please add them one at a time. The old Ach1 behaviour of allowing multiple tags in a single input is no longer supported.

What is that number in brackets?: This is the number of times someone has "clicked" on that link. Please note that this is not an accurate measure of the number of visitors - there are other ways of visiting the story directly without being click-tracked. New to Ach2, I store limited information, but only if you have an access key. These click statistics will never be displayed to anyone other than yourself, though. In all other cases, I do not store any information about click behaviour. It's only intended as an indicator of which stories people are clicking on today - a sort of "follow me" sign.

I haven't visited in a few days. How can I catch up?: Use the handy paging feature to catch up. Generally speaking, it's not a good idea to assume that blog stories will be kept archived for more than a few months at most. However, new to Ach2; I do retain stories for a configurable amount of time (usually dictated by when I can be bothered to run the cleanup script). To reduce server overhead, anonymous users are allowed 2 weeks worth of archives while access key users get a few weeks more.

I want to tag/become an Achcharu overlord. Help my plan for world domination, one blog at a time: Unmoderated tagging is pretty much open to anyone who contacts me for an access key. Other functionality is not open to all, however; but most of it is unimportant to viewing blog entries anyway. You're not missing much.

What's an access key?: Think of it as a simple password. Set the access key and check the "authorization status" indicator. If your authorization status is "ok" as opposed to "unknown", you're capable of doing more than just reading entries on this site.

You haven't added my site to this ... achcharu business. My human rights are being violated.: Sorry, but which sites are tracked using this tool is completely and solely at my discretion. This is unlikely to change at any point in the future. Feel free to send a request to add a site which interests you (it could be your own site) and I'll respond. If you know me IRL, it's highly unlikely I'll refuse. Everyone else ... on a case by case basis. My sandbox, my rules. Any blog is fair game for addition though, I don't need to agree with your views or content to add you. It just has to be ... interesting.

You have added my site to this ... achcharu business. My human rights are being violated. Take me off this farcical site immediately.: Apologies, but if your entries appear as part of Kottu or some other aggregiation engine there isn't an easy way to stop them appearing on this site as well. Having said that, if there is a serious objection to being syndicated via Ach, I'll see what I can do to remove your entries and/or block your entries from public view.

Your site is buggy. I have the following problems with it...: Why, thank you for a detailed bug report or a feature request. As mentioned earlier, Achcharu is very much a work in progress - so reporting bugs will help immensely.

Your stupid site doesn't work on my browser: Achcharu is only tested with Firefox and Opera. As a secondary objective, I try to maintain usability with Internet Explorer and Konqueror; but that's pretty much all the browsers I have at my disposal. If you're using something else (ie: Safari), I'm afraid it's unlikely I'll be able to fix your problem, as I do not have access to that environment. However, propose a change or send me a bugfix and I'll do my best to make sure it gets into the code.

Hey. Someone tagged my story in a way I don't like. Do something about it.: Go here.

Why are there so few entries?: Usually because one of the larger aggregator engines is producing a broken feed. RSS feeds are in XML format with fairly strict rules on what constitutes a valid feed. Due to some bugs in Wordpress 2.0.2; RSS feeds produced from that version of the blog engine are sometimes invalid. This in turn means that no other aggregator (for instance, Ach) can make sense of the output being produced.

Fix it?!: Umm. I asked the admins of Kottu (nicely) and they eventually upgraded their Wordpress. Unfortunately, that hasn't fixed all of it. New to Ach2, though - I've taken matters into my own hands and do not rely entirely on the XML based feed. If the Kottu feed breaks, I use an alternative method to fetch stories. So far, it seems to work ok. Time will tell.

Fetch My Feed (FMF) functionality

Can anyone see this?: No. The FMF functionality is only visible to specific access key users.

Why just specific users?: It is open to any access key user. But you need to have a blog that is syndicated directly by Achcharu for the function to have any meaning at all. Some access key users do not have a blog or alternately, do not have a blog that is syndicated directly by Achcharu. FMF is redundant in those instances.

Why do I need this?: If you've published a blog entry but if Ach hasn't gotten around to showing it yet - give Ach a hurry up by clicking the Fetch My Feed link. this is optional, though. Ach will fetch your feed just fine, even if you don't do this.

So why is it there?: Achcharu uses an adaptive feed fetcher technology - which builds a prediction model for when you will write a blog post. Yes, you read that correctly - there is a predictive fetcher in operation, has been in place for the past month or more. Sometimes (surprisingly often) the feed fetcher gets it right. Sometimes it doesn't. This link allows you, the blog author, to proactively notify the adaptive feed fetcher that it needs improvement.

You're just making us click links for fun, aren't you?: Actually, yes.. yes, I am. But the adaptive feed fetcher operates on penalties for bad performance. If it fetches an entry too late, it penalizes itself. When you force the fetcher to grab a feed ahead of schedule AND if the fetcher sees a new entry, it will penalize itself appropriately and adapt. So, essentially, by clicking on the link - you're making the feed fetcher work better for your blog.

What happens when I click the link?: The fetcher will bump you from the existing timeslot to fetch your feed and put you on the next available higher priority timeslot. This does not mean you will be fetched immediately. This is important to note, the fetcher may grab other higher priority fetches before getting around to your feed. However, your waiting time should be no more than an absolute maximum of one hour from clicking on the link.

So why don't I click several times then?: Because the fetcher will only listen to you once. Once a request to bump your feed priority has been received, the fetcher will ignore further input until the feed has been fetched.

I clicked the link, it said OK but nothing happened?: See above. The fetcher will not always grab your feed immediately. You will be put on the next available timeslot. This process may take upto one hour (but will usually be a much shorter wait). If you have waited at least an hour and your entry still does not appear, please do the following - run your feed through feedvalidator.org and check for validity. If your feed is invalid, it may not be fetched properly.
If your feed is valid, send me an email and I'll investigate the problem.

Why don't you do what the other blog aggregators do and let anyone click the link?: Because I hate that idea. Achcharu runs on commodity hardware and a shared server. Encouraging random people to launch a very resource intensive process on my server by clicking a link is, in my opinion, a braindead idea. It's just asking for someone to DOS your server because their blog entry doesn't appear on the aggregator. This method is safer (for me and my server) and will actually help the adaptive fetcher tune its performance.

I can see my blog entries fine, but someone else's blog entries aren't appearing. What do I do?: Mail me and I'll look into it.

Privacy policy and other legalese

What information do you gather when I visit this site?: I do not use external statistics trackers on Achcharu (this may change in future, but I can't see why at the moment). However, a quick look at my website logs does yield a list of IP addresses for people visiting Achcharu. This is no different from any other website. As a matter of personal interest, I keep a running count of unique IPs to visit Achcharu in a day/week/month. I also check why they visited, if they came in via a search engine. I'm not really a stats obsessive. Honest.

What information do you gather when I use (ie: tag/click through) on this site?: There is a distinction if you are an anonymous user or already possess an access key. If you are an anonymous user, I currently retain your ip address and clicked entry to compile click stats. If you tag anonymously, I retain your IP address and some browser information. If you are an authorized user (ie: you authenticate with an access key), I retain information about your click-throughs and your tagging.

What is this information used for?: Gathering of IP/browser information for anonymous tags is performed to prevent potential abuses. Anonymous tagger IP/browser statistics will only be shared with a limited pool of tag moderators. Gathering of statistics for access key holders is performed to allow display of personalized individual statistics. This information will only be revealed to the individual access key holder- ie: you will only see your tags and click through information, no one else's.

The lawyers made me say this: Sharing Information with third parties - We will not share your personal information with any third parties, unless required by valid governmental authority, such as a court order.

What information do you retain about the bloggers and their blog entries?: Only as much information as given out by their blogs. This includes (but is not confined to) the title, date, authors and full published content of their blog entry as well as other metadata (such as labels and/or tags and/or category information). Needless to state, full copyright of the content resides with individual authors - Achcharu provides an aggregation service, it does not produce original content.

Navel gazing

So, where are you planning on taking this?: I honestly do not know. This was intended for use by myself primarily and a small group of friends. It isn't intended to grow much beyond that. Also, it's a spare time project for me and I don't plan on becoming an Adsense overlord from it. Somewhat alarmingly, traffic numbers seem to be growing steadily since I launched, but the ultimate purpose is to read Sri Lankan blogs in a slightly different format. If this works for you, cool. Drop me a mail and tell me what doesn't work for you; I'm always happy to hear feedback and criticism.

Not make money from this? You're just a filthy hippie/commie, aren't you?: Meh. I have had the hair to support your hippie theory; but that's about it. Right now, I do work for my employer(s) and I also experiment with various things and technologies which strike my fancy. My experiments are usually released free for anyone to use. This project is written for my own use and amusement - thus, I have no plans to monetize any aspect of it.

You know, I have this great idea for Achcharu. Why don't you implement it?: Thank you for taking a sufficient interest in Achcharu to propose new features. Beyond a series of core features which form my vision (such a loaded term) for Achcharu, I actually consider this project to be a blank slate. Any (and all) feature requests are most welcome and will be gratefully received. If you have ideas which can radically improve your experience of Achcharu without disrupting other users; then it's most likely going to go down as a feature. But er. remember. This is not my day job. It's not strictly even my night time job. Any (and every) aspect of Achcharu is fair game for a change request, though.

What's your roadmap?: Why, I'm glad you asked.
Targets for 1.0 (Nontusvel): Extended summaries, Data layer abstraction, Big Brother stats, del.icio.us style tag categories, tag clouds
Targets for 2.0 (Aiken Drum): , SQLite/MySQL support for data, Scriptaculous replaced with mootools, SimplePie vs MagpieRSS argument, SimplePie wins, drastic page load optimizations, definitive fix for server based dupe detection, automagic feed fixing, consistent and deterministic page load times, Anonymous tagging, caching support
Targets for post 2.0 (Felice): tag list, block list, history, tag categories (called labels)and rewriting, tag clouds, stats, tag moderation, JS effects - ongoing
Targets for 2.1: profile pages for authors, comment feed integration, Bigger, better Big Blogger stats, RSS feed generation (maybe), cross talk with other projects, personalized feed categories, reintroduce secret feeds and write new feed preferences, tag voting, admin interfaces - ongoing, categories, archives, take over the world
Public Ach todo list is here