phil wilson :: a geek commodity

10:47 AM

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Wednesday, July 02, 2003

RSS Bru-ha-ha

When I originally created my RSS feed, it was version 0.91. I’d read the spec, seen the example feed, and based my own feed on these.

Then I “upgraded” it to 2.0. I started to read the spec, but I was short on time and patience. So I looked at other 2.0 feeds to see how I should create my own, notably Sam Ruby’s and Mark Pilgrim’s

This is the typical “view-source” approach that most people took when they were learning HTML.

But I did it wrong. I did it like I thought it should be, like I thought it would be used by others, not how it’s supposed to be.

Mark had done the same. So he’s changed his feed. His very, very popular feed, and made it how the RSS spec author intended it to be.

A lot of people think he’s taking the piss, showing how “useless” RSS is, and why everyone should get behind the Necho project. I don’t think he is. I think we all took RSS as something more than it was intended to be.

This is not a stunt, and itâ??s not a satire, and youâ??re not going to wake up tomorrow and visit diveintomark.org and see a post that says “ha ha, just kidding“. This is an honest attempt to “do RSS right“, according to the spec and the intention of the spec author [...]

Think of it as the RSS Standards Campaign.

(I, incidentally, couldn’t give two hoots for what my feed’s supposed to be, and shall probably move to RSS 3.0 any day now ;) )

p.s. I was hoping to be able to send trackback pings to a number of weblogs critisicing Mark for this change, but I can’t, because they all use Radio. The cynic in me arches an eyebrow at this.