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When updating a cached list of questions, I can query min last_activity_date, drastically reducing traffic.

using creation_date, one can efficiently maintain a cached list of users with minimal network traffic.

without a last_modified there is no way to efficiently update a cached list of users.

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Hmmm.

I like this idea, for the record.

However, currently we don't track this information. You'll note there's no notion of a user's profile having a history, or an edited date, or anything like that on the sites themselves.

Given how far reaching introducing this feature would be, I'm going to [status-deferred] this request. It will be revisited by the time we get to a 2.0.

Until then, be aware that user profile updates are very rare*. On the order of weeks, or months I'd guess.

*Once the autobiographer badge has been obtained, at least.

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  • granted. who churns their profile?. creation is enough info to pull just users created later than the last time your cache was updated. hooking last_modified, when/if it exists, would be nice. Thanks. Jun 18, 2010 at 8:46
  • How about adding a way to query "last modified" on lists? For example, in Stack2Blog (stackapps.com/questions/611/…), we need to grab a user's entire list of answers. If we want to implement caching, it would be helpful to query whether or not the list of answers has changed (I assume this applies in other places as well).
    – Edan Maor
    Jun 18, 2010 at 12:22
  • @Edan Maor - that can be accomplished by sorting by creation (for new answers, or activity for new and changed answers), and setting min to the last query time. Variations on that approach allow for caching in a number of use cases. Jun 18, 2010 at 13:37
  • Thanks, I didn't know that. I'll have a look at that now.
    – Edan Maor
    Jun 18, 2010 at 14:35

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