Proposal for New Optional Tag in Sitemap Protocol--<expires>

Sitemap Protocol 0.90, Expiration

[JonW]

While for many websites content has no clear expiration, there are many types of documents that should be "archived" and do not need to be available to the normal website visitor at some point in time.

Some examples,
Classfied ads that have expired or transaction completed.
Auctions that have ended.
Job Descriptions for postition that are no longer available.
Real Estate Listing that have been removed from market.
Registration Documents for events that have already occured.

Propose the following changes, (subject to to review) to the sitemap protocol:

<xsd:element ref="expires" minOccurs="0" />

<xsd:element name="expires">
<xsd:annotation>
<xsd:documentation>OPTIONAL: The date the location URI of the document is no longer valid or appropriate. Request to cease crawling and remove from any indexes. The date must conform to the W3C DATETIME format (http://www.w3.org/TR/NOTE-datetime). Example: 2005-05-10 expires may also contain a timestamp. Example: 2005-05-10T17:33:30+08:00</xsd:documentation>
</xsd:annotation>
<xsd:simpleType>
<xsd:restriction base="xsd:string">
<xsd:minLength value="10" />
<xsd:maxLength value="25" />
</xsd:restriction>
</xsd:simpleType>
</xsd:element>

[jdMorgan]

I'd prefer to see a different term used, so as to avoid confusion with the Cache-control "expires" attribute... However, I'm at a loss to propose a compelling alternative; The best I can come up with is "Discard" or the term you mentioned, "Archive."

I can see potential for serious problems cropping up due to similarly-named variables on sites which use scripts and databases to generate both per-page server response cache-control headers and sitemaps. The fact that neither of these two values is directly-visible in the browser and that both have the potential to cause great harm if set incorrectly leads me to be wary of using the same name for these two very different things.

[added] A few more alternatives: obsolete, defunct, inactive, remove, de-index, de-list [/added]

Jim

[edited by: jdMorgan at 5:30 am (utc) on July 7, 2007]

[Marshall]

In journalism they have an expression for files kept on hand in case a prominent person dies: Morgue File. So why not

<xsd:element ref="morgue" minOccurs="0" />

I imagine it is a word that woulld not be used in too many places.

Marshall