The Microsub server may remove all of this feed's items from the channel, or may leave them in place, at its discretion. If you are used to treating these channels as an IRC or Slack timeline, it would be more appropriate to leave the old items in the channel, just stop delivering new ones. However if you are more used to treating these channels as a Twitter or Facebook feed, then you may want the server to remove them from the channel.
TODO: Should there be another parameter for the client to specify whether to remove previous entries or leave them?
I'm not sure what this parameter should actually be. Thumbing through the spec I see mentions of actions like channels and timeline using a method parameter. Examples include:
action=channels supports method values of order and delete
delete is used to delete the whole channel
action=timeline supports method values of mark_read, mark_unread, and remove
remove is used to remove one or more specified entries from a channel's timeline.
Given these examples, I propose that an unfollow request could have an extra method parameter with a value remove to both unfollow the source and remove the associated entries.
Spec section on unfollowing (https://indieweb.org/Microsub-spec#Unfollowing) says:
By way of example, Aperture's implementation of unfollow removes the source without removing its entries. But the
remove_sourcemethod it call supports a flag to delete the entries.I'm not sure what this parameter should actually be. Thumbing through the spec I see mentions of actions like
channelsandtimelineusing amethodparameter. Examples include:action=channelssupportsmethodvalues oforderanddeletedeleteis used to delete the whole channelaction=timelinesupportsmethodvalues ofmark_read,mark_unread, andremoveremoveis used to remove one or more specified entries from a channel's timeline.Given these examples, I propose that an unfollow request could have an extra
methodparameter with a valueremoveto both unfollow the source and remove the associated entries.