Re: Referer URI MUST NOT include a fragment

Have Youtube themselves been involved in any discussion about the use 
for ?feature=related?

Seems to me it's not anything to do with Referer headers, but occurs 
when a user actively clicks on a link to see a related video.  Such 
"related" video is returned by youtube from a previous request.  This 
allows youtube to track whether people click on links related videos or 
not - e.g. gauge effectiveness of this system.

I don't see how the referer header with a fragment would be any better.


Vincent Murphy wrote:
> During a discussion [0] about why Youtube uses ?feature=related in its 
> URIs, I observed that the Referer header URI, if it included a 
> fragment identifier, could be used identify the anchor used to 
> initiate a GET. This would be useful for
>
> - analysing anchor popularity,
> - eliminating the need for workarounds and hacks like Youtube 
> ?feature=related
> - encourage cleaner, canonical URIs.
>
> I did a search of discussions around the HTTP protocol, but was not 
> able to find the origin of the statement from RFC2616 Section 14.32 
> [1], paraphrased in the subject of this message. This statement is 
> also in draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-05, section 10.6 [2].
>
> I seek links to the discussion or rationale and origin of this 
> statement, or failing that, comments about how allowing fragment 
> identifiers in Referer URIs would enhance or violate web architecture.
>
> Thanks,
> -Vincent Murphy
>
> 0. 
> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7x49v/canonical_url_tag_the_most_important_advancement/c07ne0v 
>
> 1. http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html#sec14.36
> 2. 
> http://www.ietf.org/internet-drafts/draft-ietf-httpbis-p2-semantics-05.txt 
>
>

-- 
Adrien de Croy - WinGate Proxy Server - http://www.wingate.com

Received on Saturday, 14 February 2009 22:18:04 UTC