Dave Winer I mean, with his newsRiver.root:
When the aggregator reads a feed it sets the referer for the request to http://www.newsriver.org/, a new site with a place-holder message for people who are unfamiliar with the aggregator. This address will appear in the referer logs for feeds that are read by users of this aggregator.
And again he spammed the referer, instead of adhering to the standard of putting the URL for the aggregator in the User-Agent header. No, not all hits from aggregators come from their pages, this is utter nonsense that he already perpetrated with the Radio Userland aggregator. And back then he showed himself to be forgetful when it was tried to explain it to him.
Why are programmers, especially in the field of web technologies and related topics, so incapable of looking at specifications? And simply adhering to what makes sense? The HTTP specification is not that complicated that one couldn't at least adhere to it rudimentarily ...