Just some light rambling as I work through some bugs around here.
Setting aside the fact that all server log reporting should be taken with a large grain of salt, what kind of effects do integrated feed readers have on the complexion of a sites understood audience? Not so recently we’ve seen the Live Bookmark features in Firefox, Opera has had integration with their mail and news reader, there are other such sidebar plugins and the like.
Any “dumb” reporting software will then take those automated requests and lump them in with the rest of the hits and skew the outcome one way or another. Even smarter solutions that allow certain requests (like those to the feed itself) to be ignored might not pick up on other behaviors of readers, or perhaps by ignoring the feed not allow for an appreciation of the use of those feeds.
Would the User Agents that are making the requests help, or just hurt the situation more if they represented themselves differently based on what part of the application is making the requests?
Do things things ultimately matter to the consumer of the report? Does it matter how a 5% or 10% “Opera” usage on a site got to that point? To the site’s owner? To the site’s designer?
Just something to think about. Now back to work.
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