[Greasemonkey] Question: what would happen ifGreasemonkeysenttheID of every applicable user script with eachrequest?

[Matthew Gertner]

Mark,

> Another data point in this discussion: from my foray into the
> syndication world, I know that some system administrators will simply
> ban any user agent that they don't recognize.  I run my own web
> server, and I have a report that runs every day that lists any
> User-Agent that it hasn't seen before.  The addition of a
> "Greasemonkey" label onto the standard User-Agent, along with a long
> list of unknown script names, will raise alarm bells with system
> administrators who are generally (a) extremely busy, (b) paranoid
> about the health of their servers, and (c) lazy about researching.

Your points are well-taken. A couple of comments:
- I definitely wouldn't put the full list of scripts in the User-Agent
field. It would make more sense to put only the fact that GM is being used,
and ONLY if a relevant script is active (see next point). The actual list of
scripts could be somewhere else in the header (such as comment fields, as
Edwards suggests).
- I would only include scripts that are specific to the site in question.
There's really no point in telling a site operator that you are running
Linkifier or something like that. So the list isn't likely to get too long.

Whether system administrators would pay any attention to this or convey the
information to the content creators is, of course, anyone's guess. We'll
only know if we try it. I don't personally believe that widespread blocking
of GM will become a problem, but if it does we can react accordingly.

Cheers,
Matt