<p>Whether feed or html, suspect 404 is not the correct response in these situations. Can't quite determine what the appropriate code should be.</p>
<p>If we take the view that the resource is a search, then what we get is an empty list of search results. The resource is perfectly valid, so 200.</p>
<p>Another perspective is that request is "bad", because the parameter is invalid (debatable), so "400 Bad Request". This is defined as a generic client-side error anyway, so I'm sure it can be justified. A quick search shows me <a href="https://developer.foursquare.com/overview/responses">Foursquare are also taking this approach in their API</a>.</p>
<p>None of the other 4xx codes seem appropriate to me.</p>
<p>If you think we're overthinking this, it's in the API this most matters (outside the scope of this ticket, but they should align). From a quick scan, it looks like OSM's API returns 404 when an id parameter can't be matched (e.g. <a href="http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6#Query:_GET_.2Fapi.2F0.6.2Fchangesets">http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/API_v0.6#Query:_GET_.2Fapi.2F0.6.2Fchangesets</a> ). Perhaps that should be up for consideration in 0.7.</p>
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