it's increasingly looking like i'd have to make my own web tool to run such a check across, say, the whole list of relays from nostr.watch.
Discussion
it should be possible to query a relay to see if it has a certain record, right?
Yes, you’ll have to make a [“REQ”] with the appropriate syntax and filter.
See: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/01.md
Yeah perhaps that would be useful. Nostr.info has a little web socket playground on the Relayr page as well but you’d still need to query one at a time.
nostr.band does a lot of aggregation but you’ll find their results aren’t perfect either. Accurate/precise timely aggregation is a difficult challenge.
Also nostr.wine blocks a LOT of aggregators due to their insane bandwidth consumption.
aggregating would be a bigger project, so i was just thinking client-side and if it's a bit slow, that's fine, because you're not going to be doing such a check super often anyway.
The key issue is it’s only captured at a point in time. The next time you check it could be different.
And who has been checked is also a subset of the entire network. Never full visibility.
It’s still valuable, however it’s decaying data.. the longer ago it was seen the less likely it’s still there.