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Remove comment management from the AtomPub service - #215

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snoopdave merged 1 commit into
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remove-atompub-comments
Oct 12, 2026
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snoopdave merged 1 commit into
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remove-atompub-comments

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Follows the dev@ discussion with Matt about AtomPub and AI agents: an agent that moderates comments reads text that anyone on the internet can write, and with an admin login the same credentials can also write templates. Until Roller has scoped credentials, comments stay in the web interface.

  • Remove CommentCollection, its routes and its service document entry. /{handle}/comments and /{handle}/comment/{id} now answer 404.
  • Remove thr:in-reply-to support from AtomReader/AtomWriter; only comments used it.
  • Remove the comment tests, doc examples, roller-atompub.rnc elements and the Comments chapter of the AtomPub guide. Regenerated examples drop the unused thr namespace.
  • CHANGES.md and the user guide no longer list comment moderation over AtomPub (Roller 7 is unreleased, so no removal note).

ROL-2185's fix (#214) is unaffected.

Testing: full mvn install on JDK 17, 485 tests, 0 failures.

The comments collection let an AtomPub client list, moderate and delete
comments. Comment text is written by anyone, and a client that reads it
with the same credentials that can edit templates is a poor combination,
especially for AI agents. Remove the collection until there is a better
way to scope credentials; comments are moderated in the web interface.

- Remove CommentCollection, its routes and its service document entry;
  /{handle}/comments and /{handle}/comment/{id} now answer 404.
- Remove thr:in-reply-to support from the Atom reader and writer, which
  only comments used.
- Remove the comment tests, examples, schema elements and the Comments
  chapter of the AtomPub guide; update CHANGES.md and the user guide.

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Thanks for doing this so quickly, Dave. I looked through the diff and the only "comment" references left in the AtomPub code are CommentAuthorUrl for category images and the new note in the guide that comments are moderated in the web UI. The ROL-2185 fix and CommentSharedCacheTest are unaffected.

For later: templates are still writable over AtomPub by anyone with an admin login, and an agent that manages a site will usually get the admin's password. Scoped credentials would let people give an agent only what it needs, like app passwords limited to certain collections (entries and media, but not templates) or read-only ones, that can be revoked without changing the account password. That would also be a reasonable way to bring comment moderation back later. I'm happy to write it up as a JIRA if you think it's worth doing.

@snoopdave
snoopdave merged commit b8dabb7 into master Oct 12, 2026
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