How content validation works

Being pushed is not the same as being accepted. Every item that reaches the service is queued for a check, and only what passes it is offered to other members.

Three states

Each item in the content list carries one of three states:

• Not processed yet – the check has not run yet. Every freshly pushed item starts here.
• Valid – the item passed and belongs to the pool other members draw from.
• Invalid – something did not check out. The item stays out of the exchange until it passes again.

When the check happens

Not immediately. A pushed item waits a few minutes for its turn, and a site that offers hundreds of posts at once is checked gradually rather than all in the same second.

Pushing an item again replaces whatever was planned for it: the pending check is dropped and a new one is scheduled. Items you have not edited are skipped by the push and keep the state they already have.

What is checked

The service opens the item's address the way an anonymous visitor would – no cookies, no login, no scripts – and looks for four things:

• The page opens. It answers, it answers quickly enough, and it answers with a page rather than an error or a long chain of redirects.
• It is an ordinary web page. An article a reader can open, not a file, a feed or a download.
• It has readable text of a reasonable size. Neither an almost empty page nor an enormous one.
• The text is the text you offered. What the page shows now has to match, in the main, what you pushed.

The first thing that does not check out ends the check, and the item becomes invalid.

After the check

A valid item joins the pool other members draw from, provided its client is active and its point balance covers a click – see how points work. An invalid item stays out of the pool and enters the retry cycle described in revalidation.

Where to see the result

Open the Clients section, pick the client and press Content list: every row shows its address, title, language and state. The client's own page carries the totals – Total, Valid, Invalid and Not processed yet – and the plugin keeps the same tally on its Dashboard page.

The content list does not say why an item failed. When an item that used to be valid fails a check, the Dashboard lists it in the Action Center with the reason, the number of failed checks in a row and the time of the last check. For an item that has never passed yet, the list above is the order to walk through yourself. Opening the address in a private browser window catches most of it.