The system uses a set of CGI scripts as a backend. Each CGI script (except 'listen', see below) responds to POST submissions that have content sent using the MIME type text/plain. Each submission has one line of text per parameter. The CGI scripts all return XML documents with no namespaces. If the document consists of a single element , then the contents of that element are the error message, as a theoretically human-readable string. Otherwise the document is the data requested, as described below. The CGI scripts and their parameters are as follows: http://www.whatwg.org/issues/register This CGI script allows a user to obtain their password. First and only parameter: the e-mail address of the user. Returns: just for success. On success, an e-mail is sent to the e-mail address. http://www.whatwg.org/issues/login This CGI script allows a user to confirm their credentials. First parameter: the e-mail address of the user. Second parameter: the password of the user. Returns: just if the credentials are correct. http://www.whatwg.org/issues/getdata This CGI script is what returns the data. First parameter: one of "folders", "emails", "top-emails", "body". The subsequent parameters and return value depend on the first. For "folders": No other parameters. Returns an element containing zero or more elements whose contents are the name of each folder (one per element). For "emails": One more parameter, the folder. Returns an element , containing zero or more elements whose contents are the subject lines of each email (one per element). The elements also have "id" attributes and "date" attributes; the "id" attribute gives the message-id for that message and the "date" attribute givs the date of the message in seconds since the Unix epoch. For "top-emails": One more parameter, the number of emails to return. Returns up to that many e-mails in the same way as the "emails" case described above, except that the elements also have a "folder" attribute giving one of the folders in which the e-mail is found. For "body": One more parameter, the message-id. Returns a element with a element whose text is the text of the subject of the message, a element whose text is the text of the body of the message , and zero or more elements each of which has the e-mail address of someone who has voted for that e-mail as its contents. http://www.whatwg.org/issues/vote This CGI script adds, removes, or toggles votes. It takes four parameters: The first parameter is the mode, either "add", "remove", or "toggle". The second parameter is the user's e-mail address. The third parameter is their password. The fourth parameter is the message-id they are changing their vote for. Returns: Just , assuming the parameters were valid. http://www.whatwg.org/issues/listen This CGI script sends a continuous stream of