Talk:RSS/Archive 1

File format not Protocol

Hmm, I would call RSS (of whatever version) a file format, a document type, or an object model, but not a protocol.

Don't know much about this area, but I too have doubts about RSS being a protocol. communications protocol doesn't list it. A-giau 05:20, 25 Nov 2004 (UTC)

It isn't a protocol. It's all done over HTTP. If RSS is a protocol, then so is HTML. I've moved the page, and removed the last mention of protocol in the article text. Rho 13:16, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It isn't a file format, either. The file format is XML. RSS is an XML dialect. This is stated explicitly in the official RSS 2.0 specification http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss. -capn_midnight

heckler, wikispammer

68.14.170.144 Said they were confused about the article, swore, and was sarcastic. 210.187.3.130 posted wikispam here. What to do about this? I don't know, because I don't know who to contact to report stuff like this. Emailing first author of article. --Mr alex hall 00:16, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Major editing

Just edited the article, in the hope to make it a bit more concise, and user friendly. Removed some wrong information (RSS 1.0 is not a W3C standard) and the rather strong Userland bias. I also took the liberty to provide information on what RSS is good for before describing the gory details of how the mess that is now RSS came into existence. Finally i added some cross references to help people get more information. Hope this is helpful, Kusako 20 Feb 2005

various

In "Usage," added references to newspapers and wire services using RSS; moved up the reference to blogs using RSS for full text, not just summaries, and the relation of blogs to multimedia. Introduced the "syndication" concept earlier, trying to help explain the name. In "History," removed a "several months later" reference between 1.0 and .92, because no source was given and the documents the two references linked to mention the same month -- early and late December 2000. Let the who-came-first arguments go on elsewhere. Also defined "forked" for non-technical readers. I noticed that Winer's connection with Userland was not mentioned at all, so added that at the first reference to him and in the later section on transfer of the spec. And I tried to clarify the time sequence for 2.0 -- it was issued before the Harvard transfer. Also added Winer's departure from the advisory board.

Phew. Bstepno

Why no mention of RSS extensions for IE under "Usage?" That is really not helpful to someone trying to find that in particular. Rhodomontade

Why not write it yourself? · rodii ·

laymen need more info! Really!

Can someone please add a section that explains why RSS is interesting? While the technical details are helpful in understanding the "how," non-techies may want to know the why first. Thanks, Throbblefoot 19:27, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. As a technical article it is excellent but it fails, quite seriously, to describe what it is like to live with and use RSS, what you do, what it does, and why it's so good. At the moment it is still inward-looking towards nerddom and needs to consider what it means, looks, feels, smells and tastes like to the average non-nerd in the street. :) Love from A Grouchy Anonymous Old Git.

I just added a link at the bottom of the article page to this site which i found to be very informative: "This tutorial explains the features and benefits of a Web format called RSS, and gives a brief technical overview of it." maybe someone could get some ideas of how to make the wiki article more interesting by looking through this.

Indeed - thanks very much. 138.37.199.199 15:20, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

I've also added a link that may help you RSS4medics.com. It is an explanation of the why not the how specifically for those in the medical sector - why doctors should be using RSS, how it can benefit them and act as a tool to further medical research. Even though that is probably not your area, it should give you some ideas as to the potential benefits of RSS, the same prinicples of which can be applied to many different industry sectors. 23:57, 18 February 2006

NPOV Concerns

I have a NPOV concern about the following passage from the usage section: "As the mainstream media attempts to realize the full potential of RSS, the new media is utilizing RSS by bypassing traditional news sources. Consumers and journalists are now able to have news constantly fed to them instead of searching for it." Seems to be a dig at the "old media" on the part of a member of "the new media." Also, the second sentence seems far too much a plug. Not very encyclopedic... We are to inform, not to advocate. - 207.166.7.200, March 4, 2006.

I agree. --Ben Houston 00:05, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Atom

I also think that we need to expand on Atom related info as well. for semi-techie users such as myself, the tussle between Atom and RSS 'specifications' is of historical significance (Article: (Guardian.com) RSS and Atom peace proposal), especially with most sites starting for offer both the feeds.

More info on AtomEnabled Alliance

--Mayuresh Kadu (India) 03:53, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Web directory

List of news aggregators was a web directory so I have added it here. It is good work, well done and well worth it, and is similar to the EL's at BitTorrent, SqueakBox 20:18, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

That list does not belong on this page, so I've reverted edits to both pages. News aggregator may be a more appropriate page to move it to, though I really think your problem is with the content itself and not its location. If Wikipedia is not a web directory, how does moving said web directory to another page solve the problem? Maybe you should edit the page in place to what's notable, and then merge if necessary. --Dtcdthingy 01:03, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia RSS support

Anyone know of plans for Wikipedia to support RSS? I would love to be able to access my watchlist via RSS. --Dan East 00:19, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

An interesting idea, but with 2,800+ articles watched personally it would be hopelessly impractical. Suggest it somewhere at the Wikipedia:Village pump, SqueakBox 00:23, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Of course one could always set up a much smaller watchlist on a dormant sock account. The more I think about it the more I like it, though it might make edit wars more fraught than they often already are, SqueakBox 15:10, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

I just had the same idea of having an RSS feed of my watchlist. It would be a very nice idea to follow up on violators and act quickly to revert those violations. Is it allowed to have a script that downloads my watchlist on the hour to transform that into my very own rss feed? --Anthony Liekens 09:04, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

More can be read here and [1] --Anthony Liekens 09:19, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Attempting to gather conversation and support for implementation at meta:Syndication_feeds. Please, go there and add a note in favor and what you'd like in the feed. Here 22:51, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

RSS is very exciting; I will contribute here if I can. I was wondering, though, where would be a good place to make suggestions here? It would be incredible if watchlists could be made into RSS feeds! -lydgate (moved from top)

Suggestion: it would be neat if Wikipedia had a feed that, each day, linked to the top 5 searched-for articles the previous day. (moved from top)

I think a more instantly useful RSS would be 'did you know...?' entries/current events/featured articles from the front page.

• Guys, as others above have tried to suggest, this is a great place to make suggestions if you want to ensure that they never get implemented. On the other hand, if you want someone to listen, try meta:Syndication_feeds or Wikipedia:Village pump. · rodii · 16:46, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I don't know when this happened, but apparently Wikipedia articles are now RSS-enabled! [2] And Atom-enabled too! Note that you have to go to the article's History page in order to find this feature, though. betsythedevine 19:58, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Quotes on RSS Controversy

"Speaking of RSS, here's my read on what happened. (I wasn't directly involved.) A group of people involved in RSS got together to start thinking about its future evolution. Dave was part of the group. When the consensus of the group turned in a direction he didn't like, Dave stopped participating, and characterized it as a plot by O'Reilly to take over RSS from him, despite the fact that Rael Dornfest of O'Reilly was only one of about a dozen authors of the proposed RSS 1.0 spec, and that many of those who were part of its development had at least as long a history with RSS as Dave had. The only connection I can see is that the O'Reilly Network ran a series of ads on our sites promoting its stories about the RSS 1.0 spec (just as it promotes other stories on O'Reilly Network sites). Dave never approached me directly to express a point of view such as 'I think the RSS spec is going in the wrong direction. Is there anything you can do to help get my point of view across to the other developers?' Instead, the first I heard of it was a series of public accusations that my company was leading a conspiracy to steal 'Dave's' standard." Tim O'Reilly 9/20/2000 Source —Preceding unsigned comment added by Deodar (talk • contribs) 29 September 2005

Merging "What's RSS?"

User:Bastawhiz has created a stupid duplicate article "What's RSS?". I don't think there are much useful information, but feel free to merge it, if needed. --minghong 03:34, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

appended to article, needs cleanup ∴ here…♠ 19:42, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

"A Lot Better"

I'm uncomfortable with this sentance under "History":

This version became known as RSS 0.9. It was basically a clone of Channel Definition Format, with a few key differences: it wasn't published by a Microsoft employee, so it wasa a lot better.

Sounds to me like a dig at Microsoft. Doesn't seem very NPOV or encylopedic to me. What does everyone else think? - Robert

This has been fixed (as at beginning 2006). It helps if you date comments like this which I think got left July 2005? --BozMotalk 15:38, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

How do I do it? New Webmaster

I'm starting a new website and I'm wondering if I should use RSS. How do I do it? --Gbleem 17:20, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

RSS Aggregator/Parsing Information Anybody?

I've been running all over the web looking for RSS creation/aggregator tools over the past few weeks and I've just about driven myself crazy. Making RSS feeds doesn't seem to be the challenge--you simply write up an XML file in a particular format, of which there are thousands of samples available on the web, but everywhere I go this is the only information I can find.

The problem is how to display RSS feeds on your website, particularly PHP which seems to be the most common way. This issue is not addressed enough on the web and seems to be a gaping hole. For programmers who know PHP, probably not an issue, but what about the rest of us who can barely get by in HTML?

Somebody asked on this discussion why RSS? My answer is so I can display updated content on my website that updates itself automatically from the major news services, or any other content that is in RSS format for that matter. I'm sure I'm one of hundreds of thousands of people stuck trying to do the same thing.

For being Really Simple Syndication, RSS sure seems pretty complicated to display. There are sites that provide modules for getting RSS feeds to display on your website, but they are either buggy, or require knowledge of databases, or only explain what to do, not how to do, none of which I'm able to figure out. I've been to various feed-this feed-that sites, downloaded, implemented, tested, etc etc ---ALL TO NO AVAIL! (and I already run PHP pages on my site) Can anybody out there do a step-by-step write-up with sample PHP code showing the following:

1. Show how to call (or include) the XML feed 2. Show sample code on how to parse the XML file, where this code is supposed to be put, and can it be kept in a separate file 3. Show us the basic code for options we have to do the following things: headlines only, headlines with description, background/text/link color control, number of items in the feed.

I suppose caching in a database is the best way, but the best solution for programming newbies who don't have the time to learn PHP is just a simple step-by-step solution that allows us to get a feed displayed, then shows how to control the various options. In the long run this would help a lot of people get more familiar with programming. I welcome commentary. Thanks a lot. Glossika 17:57, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a programming tutorial, and if it were, information on parsing XML documents would best be suited in the XML entry, not the RSS entry. Maybe you should just hire a programmer.

Suggestions For Specific Edits

I know that this seems like nitpicking, but in the second line "RSS is used by (among other things) news websites," don't you think "news websites" should like to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_website instead of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website? I realise that it would mean changing the link to direct to a stub, but I still think it's for informative than the current choice of link a5y 11:04 09 March 2006 GMT

Please don't link to stubs, this is a lost of time for readers. Alcalazar 10:35, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Need more info

I do not know what RSS feeds are. I feel that the article should include a simpler summary or maybe examples. --Splendour 2:32, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Future versions, icon misuse

Does anyone find the new section on future versions pointless (and almost incoherent)? And I question the need for a whole new example to illustrate "icon misuse". It seems that the main point could be incoporated into the history section and that whole passage deleted. I thought I would ask here instead of editing, though. Thoughts? · rodii · 14:06, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

OK then. Deleting. · rodii · 05:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Abbreviation Incorrect

RSS stands for Rich Site Summary, not "Really Simple Summary." But now that some moron has locked the article, I guess millions of people will be misinformed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.206.66 (talk) 02:34, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

The article body makes it amply clear that, in the years since its initial meaning of "RDF Site Summary," "RSS" has been given several different meanings. The article summary gives the current meaning, "Really Simple Syndication" based on the currently most-used RSS dialect, RSS 2.0. This article has, unfortunately, been vandalized in the past by unregistered editors -- that's why it is locked. Anyone who spends the five minutes required to register as a Wikipedia editor can indeed edit it. betsythedevine (talk) 05:09, 6 April 2009 (UTC)

File format not Protocol

RSS is certainly not a file format or a protocol. if anything it is a standard for content delivery. why would somone who doesn't understand the article take it upon themselves to define the term? XML is not a file format either. if i can type a document in notepad that has XML or RSS structure, the file format is plain text. furthermore, RSS 0.91 doesn't even use XML Mahumphrey 06:53, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

The RSS 0.91 specification that is linked from the article says 'Files must be 100% valid XML'. It also describes RSS as a syndication format. If editors felt strongly that the article was misnamed, I suppose it could be called 'RSS (syndication format)', but I don't see the urgency. I think the Talk discussion about RSS being a protocol must be ancient history from 2005; not much point in responding to that since the word 'protocol' is not used to refer to RSS in the current article. EdJohnston 22:32, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Jonathan Avidan

The test reads "In August 2005, Israeli student Jonathan Avidan unilaterally launched a project to create "RSS 3"[10]. It failed to gain backing from anyone in the RSS industry."

If it's a one-man project from a non-notable individual that appears to have failed to gain any note, why do we bother mentioning it? Middenface 12:11, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree--also the source cited doesn't meet Wikipedia's standard. So I took it out. betsythedevine 19:53, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Make this specific to RSS; move all generic 'web feed' info to 'web feed' article

I heavily redid the RSS intro a month ago to better explain web feeds, but now I realize that should all go under web feeds. However, it's important that users coming to this page find out what RSS is, and for most people, that means learning what web feeds are in general. Should it be left up to the user to think to follow the web feed link for more explanation? I'm thinking of putting a note to users that they probably will want to read web feed. Anyone aware of standard practice here?

I've handled the intro, but I think the rest of the page should be edited to put web feed info not specific to RSS in web feed.--Apantomimehorse 01:28, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I have added a sentence that helps explain an RSS feed in very general terms. These do not contribute to the length of the article significantly. I added the sentences at the behest of a friend, because he visited the article before the addition and still had no idea what an RSS feed is. I feel it's bad practice to make encyclopedia articles too esoteric when an extra sentence or two can greatly clarify a subject.--24.13.242.3 07:13, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

Aggregators, RSS search engines

I'm removing these two lists from this article--there's no need to (partially) duplicate here information that much more fully available elsewhere: List of search engines, News aggregator, and Category:Blog search engines. Just as an example of why such lists don't belong here--somebody just created a list with only two "RSS search engines" on it, one of them Technorati, a blog search engine that does not rely on RSS search for its data. betsythedevine 13:47, 10 October 2006 (UTC)

Replace 'Other articles' section with new text?

A spam link that I removed from 'Other articles' last week has just come back (freshthinkingbusiness.com). It seems to me that a section as vaguely named as 'Other articles' will be an irresistible draw for bad links. If there were support for eliminating that section I'd try to rewrite all the useful material found there and incorporate it in the regular text of the article. EdJohnston 15:35, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

Discuss links here

Editors regularly clean out undiscussed links from this article. Please discuss here if you want a link not to be cleaned out regularly. (You can help!) EdJohnston 04:18, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

About modules. This is a bunch of links both in the article and references. Is this useful? Jupition 10:14, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

Are you referring just to the section called 'Modules'? I saw that being added, and I wondered if it was legit, but I think that RSS namespaces are important. Do you know enough about modules to improve this part? EdJohnston 18:31, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I have created an online RSS Reader that will parse basic RSS info into a table. Would that be an acceptable link to place here? The reader is free, and I am not a commercial site (nor do I host advertising). Kitoba 19:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

There is an article for readers. The right place is at RSS Readers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jahowk (talk • contribs) 14:01, 8 January 2007 (UTC).

I was going to a link to RSS @ W3 Schools, but saw that I should bring it up here first. W3 Schools (of which I'm only a fan, not affiliated) has a really great introduction/tutorial about RSS. Would it be okay if I added that? comment added by turbov21 23:29, April 30, 2007

I'd recommend against. The page has, in my opinion, objectional amounts of advertising. Further, how-to related information is not a focus of this project. Thanks for asking! ;) See also, WP:EL (advertising) , WP:NOT (how-to) ∴ here…♠ 02:28, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I second the motion. The front page of W3 Schools seems to be more than 80% advertising. The factual material is offered in paragraph-size chunks, all surrounded by further ads. EdJohnston 02:32, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Okay. I won't add it. comment added by turbov21 April 30, 2007

External Link - A well written article

Found an interesting article that I think would add to the topic. It's a beginners guide, and is well written and geared towards a non-technical audience. It's not a how-to for producing feeds, but focuses on how to use RSS yourself etc.

• A Beginners Guide to Using RSS —Preceding unsigned comment added by Caesar0 (talk • contribs) 11:49, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Logo

This is a very minor part, but I believe it should be edited. If you hover your mouse over the big feed icon, it says the icons is in IE 7 and Firefox. Shouldn't Opera be included (it is adapted in Opera)? Moronicles 21:42, 8 November 2006 (UTC)

Who owns logo copyrights? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image_talk:Feed-icon.svg

Is there any copyright infringment being made by this company: [3] using a variant on the RSS logo? I spotted it on one of their vehicles today and thought it was a bit wrong. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.23.60.6 (talk) 05:48, August 29, 2007 (UTC)

According to http://blogs.msdn.com/rssteam/archive/2005/12/14/503778.aspx the icon image was released for general usage by everyone that supports RSS. James thirteen (talk) 19:39, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

RSSFormat.com

A directory of links useful for finding an RSS feed reader for a chosen operating system (instead of linking various seperate readers). No, I am not affiliated, I merely came across this site on Yahoo Answers and thought it would be a very useful resource for anyone looking for a feed reader.

Would this not make a valid addition? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 62.136.196.109 (talk • contribs) 15 November, 2006.

The present article is the place for explaining the RSS file format, as the name suggests. Helping people choose a feed reader does not have much to do with the file format, but might be considered on the Web feeds page. However that page already has a link to the 'RSS Compendium', located at http://allrss.com/rssreaders.com. The RSS Compendium is supposed to help you choose a feed reader, and it must be reasonably popular because it gets 19,700 Google hits. By comparison, rssformat.com gets only 252 Google hits. At present, rssformat.com does not seem to fill a need better than the many alternatives. EdJohnston 21:20, 15 November 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to remove two more links and undo the EL banner

I copied here a discussion from User:Mushroom's talk page. I asked about the {{external links}} banner that he had put on the page. (It's the thing that says 'The external links for this article may require cleanup'. Please read the following and see if you agree that the two links should be removed. If no response, I'll do it in a couple of days, and remove the 'external links' banner at the same time. EdJohnston 18:38, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

"Hello Mushroom, what's up with this banner? I did not notice any suggestions from you on the Talk page. Some of us have been riding the spam links pretty hard lately, and we have a 'Discuss links here' section on the Talk page as recommended by WP:WPSPAM. I admit that I enjoyed your deletion of that one link you removed. The Specifications and the History sections seem appropriately linked. There are also two Tutorials that I haven't closely studied, but appear legitimate. Can you suggest other links that you believe should not make the cut? EdJohnston 21:43, 15 November 2006 (UTC)"

I should have examined the links better before adding the tag, most of them are ok. I would remove:

• The RSS History (Dmitry Baranov) link, since the linked page contains just a short paragraph.
• The GeoRSS link, since there is no reference to it in the article.

Mushroom (Talk) 08:26, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Thunderbird Screenshot - is it really necessary?

Well is it? It doesn't really add too the article, which talks about the RSS file format. iamthebob^{(talk|contribs)} 22:29, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

It seems that the image is about to be speedy-deleted from Commons because of copyright issues. If anyone wants to save it, they would need to negotiate with the person who nominated it, or substitute a screenshot from a FOSS RSS reader. I personally don't object to the inclusion of the screenshot but I'd like to know the exact instructions for making it. E.g. I was not aware that out-of-the-box Thunderbird could do feed-reading, so there must be a plugin involved. EdJohnston 03:33, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Requests

• Add RSS to My Watchlist Special Page (please) Ethicalhacker 16:32, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Completely missing any mention of podcasts

Although RSS wasn't originally intended for this purpose, it has very much been adopted by the podcasting community as a convenient method of syndicating audio content. Podcasts are continuing to increase in popularity, and podcast RSS feeds are already a significant percentage of all RSS feeds out there. The page should be altered to reflect that RSS no longer just syndicates "frequently updated pages, such as blogs or news feeds", but also publishes audio and video content, such as podcasts and vidcasts.

With this in mind, I've added a link to a very hard to find specification for the iTunes specification for podcast RSS feeds. Robert Rapplean 17:54, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Archive talk page?

There is still stuff here from 2005, and there are comments about issues that are long gone. Does anyone object if I move old comments to an archive page? I would like to delete all the unsigned comments; they can be recovered from the page history if needed. I would not move any active threads. EdJohnston 22:44, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Since no-one objected, I went ahead and created Talk:RSS (file format)/Archive1. I moved old threads there in Werdnabot style, and kept only those threads in which new comments were added later than 1 Sept 2006. Comments not signed by their authors were deleted unless they were key to a conversation, but they can still be found in the page history. Very long threads now only go back to 1 January, 2006. See archive for earlier. EdJohnston 03:05, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

TheJackyl.com

Came across this site TheJackyl.com after browsing digg.com. Definately a worthwhile resource for someone looking for the interworkings of RSS and an all in one RSS directory/reader. Tommyboy1985 01:29, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Adding yet another directory of feeds does not seem relevant to explaining the RSS *file format*. EdJohnston 14:22, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Remove the right links

By removing tutorials, you are wrong. Tutorial is the kind of link we have to add to the article. You should look at the body of the article itself that is full of external links and I believe there is some spams here we should carefully study. Jahowk 09:41, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

RSS Security Risks=

Here is an interesting paper describing risks of using RSS and Atom feeds. http://www.cgisecurity.com/papers/HackingFeeds.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.52.121.176 (talk) 14:30, 17 September 2007 (UTC)

About social network

Social network is heavily based on RSS feeds and so, the connection is more than evident. But if you like to remove the link, this is not a real problem. Jahowk 10:00, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Plan to revert back to 27 December version

Please tell me if there are objections to removing all the new content added since 27 December. It looks to be mostly spam and adds little to the article. I particularly object to the silly 'Tutorials and References section', which has little to do with the RSS *file format*. Everyone in the world has a helpful site to tell you how RSS works, and usually to sell a bunch of stuff as well. If I'm the only one trying to keep this stuff out, I will turn the floor over to others. EdJohnston 20:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

As I have written above, spams are not in this section but in the body of the article instead. Lot of external links, not really involved by the content of the article. Lot of websites that are not dedicated to RSS. For the tutorial section, I don't understand your complaint. This is content useful to know the RSS file format and that can't fit in the article, and this is conformant to the guidelines about external links. Jahowk 15:59, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I will support you in this, Ed, SqueakBox 16:14, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

My answer to SqueakBox has been moved to my talk page by him, If you are interested... Jahowk 16:43, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Ed because it seems to me the latest edits are not encyclopedic, we dont need to teach people how to read or write RSS and I removed the refs section following our spam guidelines. While I might have left the rerst myself Ed has asked for opinions and this is mine (based on 2 years experience working here), SqueakBox 16:49, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

I believe you have vandalized the article for personal reasons. "We dont need to teach people" you say. But people need to be teached. People don't understand anything to this format full of angle brackets, and the specification is not sufficient to understand what is RSS. The guidelines are clear about that (see the link above). We have to link content that can't fit in the article. There is no good reason to remove the tutorial section (or the see also section).

About the "see also" section, once you have removed the link to social networking it becomes useless as Atom is already linked into the body of the article. And all websites dedicated to social networking are using RSS feed (and blogrolls). Bloglines that is linked from the main article (Usage) is a social networking website.

EdJohnston has moved previously a comparison of formats from this tutorials section, to specifications, and I believe he is wrong. The article is not an official specification, it is really a tutorial.

I believe we have to restore the section to take more advices from other users, as they can't judge properly the validity of the links if the links are not here. Jahowk 10:22, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

See WP:NOT. While Wikipedia has descriptions of people, places, and things, Wikipedia articles should not include instructions or advice (legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s. This includes tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, video game guides, and recipes. If you Google for 'rss tutorial' you will get 54.2 million hits, so there are many options available for people seeking a tutorial. EdJohnston 17:19, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Here is your error. These instructions are related to ARTICLES, and you are applying to external links what should be applied to the content of Wikipedia itself. The guidelines say that we have to link to material that doesn't fit in the Wikipedia itself. Wikipedia is intended to describe and explain. But articles are not sufficient to explain, we need for external links to tutors, demonstrations, source code and so ones... Jahowk 09:12, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

If you believe you are quoting an official Wikipedia policy, please point to it. EdJohnston 21:30, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually I am quoting WP:EL, that I had pointed out above. My proposal is to restore the tutorial section before to continue this discussion unlike you can provide precise rules to remove them. Note that if we remove tutorials from CSS for example, this will leave the article with zero external links (but ODP), and external links **are** required by the guidelines. Jahowk 12:57, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

• In WP:EL the world 'tutorial' does not occur in the main text, and it gives no explicit support for your desire to link to 'tutors, demonstrations, source code, and so on.' Other Wikimedia projects such as Wikibooks and Wikiversity might be more appropriate for this type of material.
• It's up to the editors of each article to decide on the external links they think appropriate. Since the RSS (file format) article is under heavy spam pressure, in the last few months the editors have been quite vigilant about keeping out new links. WP:EL does provide that

If you link to another website, you should give your reader a good summary of the site's contents, and the reasons why this specific website is relevant to the article in question.

and you may notice that none of the external links included in the former Tutorials and References section were cited in the text, so they lacked even this amount of justification. EdJohnston 19:26, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps Wikiuniversity is more suited to tutorials for their content but we are speaking of external links. Apparently tutorials are things to link on the CSS article, but not on the RSS article? I don't agree because CSS has a W3C specification that is easier to read than the RSS one. About the pressure for external links, perhaps, but these links are here for months, and that doesn't answer to the question: are tutorials things to link or not. Your opinion has evoluted since the start of the discussion as now this depends upon the article and the editors!!! I have no "desire" for external links nor internal link in the see also section, I believe this is right. But you have not answered to that also, is the link to social networking good or not? This depends also if social networking is using RSS or no, and sure, it does. Jahowk 14:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I would prefer not to be the only editor responding to your questions, because many people have an interest in this page. However, with respect to Cascading Style Sheets, I have never edited there, so I don't know how those editors prefer to do things. Raise the issue over at Talk:Cascading Style Sheets if you think their use of external links could be improved. I wouldn't draw any conclusions from your seeing links to tutorials over at CSS as implying that such links should also be added here. If anything, WP:EL appears to say that links to tutorials are not needed. If the WP article itself is confusing, then it should be made better. Find whatever insight the tutorial may have and then merge that nugget of information back into the article itself. Articles with long lists of links are generally those that haven't been carefully watched, for whatever reason. It's also worth looking at some featured articles (see WP:FA) which are examples of the very best articles, to see how they handle their references.

With regard to social networking, I still don't see why the RSS file format has a connection to social networking which it is our business to document. RSS (file format) is more of a computer science article. Perhaps you could find some article published in a print journal that discusses a connection between RSS and social networking. If there is such an article, it might be reasonable to cite that.

If this discussion is to continue further, it should be moved to one of our talk pages, because some editors will tire of extremely long discussions on an article Talk page. EdJohnston 16:36, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Please, take note the answers I have posted are as short as possible. Here is the question: Does the RSS article needs for a short Tutorial section in external links (as CSS has) or not. And as you, I'll be pleased if other contributors can give an advice. Jahowk 17:20, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I hoped you'd find my argument (given above) against the Tutorial section convincing, based on WP:EL's complete lack of interest in tutorials. What CSS does is their business. You'll have to wait for others to answer your question. EdJohnston 19:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Not convincing since WP:EL is of general use while tutorials are useful only in technologies. Topics require different kinds of external links and they can't be all listed.

Some examples or RSS related topics:

XML - 9 tutorials.

CSS - 4 tutorials.

Atom - The same link that has been removed here.

XSL - 3 tutorials.

and so one. I can't be wrong or we are all wrong! Jahowk 12:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Missing reference to NewsML

I'm missing references to NewsML which is a format used by the major news organisations for distributing news. NewsML is adopted by the IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council) while I do not think RSS is.
Here are some links:
NewsML web site
Some very few notes I've found that "compares" NewsML and RSS
I do not know much about the topic but it seems to me that NewsML maybe is more for the professional market (b2b) while RSS perhaps is targeted more at individuals. Maybe it does not make sense to compare the two at all?
John Clarigon 10:01, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Does this format have any civilian end-users? It seems to be heavily protected, coprighted, and limited by agreements, so I wonder how much it will go into general use. And why is it being offered while RSS is already there. Do they consider RSS too open? EdJohnston 21:28, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe that the normal way should be to write an article to this format, as we have to link to RSS websites here. Jahowk 13:00, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Moving history links to references

Since the article has a history section, external links to RSS history either are used to prove the validity of the article, or are useless. My opinion is the two history links are references and should be moved in this section. Different advices? Jahowk 12:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio removed: 'Patent Issues'

The material I removed is found word-for-word in a 22 December 2006 article by Ed Oswald, at [4], copyright 2006 BetaNews, Inc. If anyone wants to rewrite the section in their own words, they are welcome to. EdJohnston 03:30, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Gigantic podcasting template

Do we want to keep the gigantic template that is added at the bottom of the article by the {{Podcasting}} template?

On my screen it adds 2.8 inches to the length of the page. This template was added today by User:Ganfon. In my view, the 'Genres' are a particular waste of space, because many of these categories are empty. (Empty categories are at risk of deletion). Please discuss here if you have an opinion. Without a consensus here supporting the inclusion of the Podcasting template, I think it should be removed. EdJohnston 22:19, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree and have removed it for now. It might be appropriate later once some more folks have worked on it and have cleaned it up. From its history, only one editor appears to have edited it and it was just created today. It's a good idea but I think it needs a lot of polishing before being placed on a bunch of articles. --ElKevbo 23:04, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Note: I did not make the template, and agree it can be smaller. Personally I don't think size is that big of a deal, but anyway, I will agree that genres can go. i also added the template on several other page. I will state that I don't think it should be removed until a replacment/ re-done template is completed.Ganfon 01:24, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

• I have re-created the template, because it is a good idea...but I agree a lot included in the original version was unnecessary. Here's what it now looks like:

I removed Genres as well as famous people. I removed generes based on the above disscussions, I removed famous people because many of them were not primerily known as podcasters, and the section took up a lot of room. I think the new version will work, so please leave some feedback. Ganfon 03:11, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I did create the template and was wondering why it was changed, but can see your points. However, I created it based on the fact that those categories and incomplete issues were to be fixed with the aggressiveness of the Wikipedia:WikiProject Podcasting members. Maybe, in time - the usefulness of the genres, especially will be valued as those categories grow. Thanks for taking the time to fix it Ganfon. BrianZ^(talk) 14:34, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Coincedently, the template I created was no bigger than any other table template I've seen on Wikipedia. Such as {{Vitamins}}.BrianZ^(talk) 14:35, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

cite check

None of the citations in the section "RSS Creation" appear to verify Ramanathan V. Guha's authorship. (sorry for not posting this before, I got distracted after adding the tag) --Random832(tc) 18:45, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Move detailed early history to a separate article

The detailed early history of who invented what web syndication format element when has become a matter of interest and dispute. The same kind of problems cropping up in the article about Podcasting were largely solved when somebody created a separate article for History of podcasting. This seems like a possible solution here, so I moved (essentially copied) historical text from this article to History of web syndication technology‎. Another possible benefit of the change is that it should prevent a Wikipedia fork in the history, so that somebody with a new citation adds to info in this article but doesn't realize that an incorrect version still lurks in a different article. My intention is good, please don't flame me. Please discuss if you do or don't think the separate article is a good idea, and if so how much of the history from this article should get moved there. betsythedevine 14:37, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Having a separate article is a good idea. I agree with your recent removal of stuff from the RSS article and moving it to History of web syndication technology. The history that remains here currently is (I think) approximately the right amount of material, but it is choppy reading, and it's more like a blow-by-blow than a real historical summary. I'd favor a higher-level overview in the RSS article, discussing the benefit to the user of the various innovations, with no attempt to minutely assign credit, but perhaps using the same amount of space as now. Also what about the engineering tradeoffs that were made along the way. E.g. what motivated the choice of XML for the format? The present article makes the final RSS format chosen seem arbitrary. EdJohnston 17:09, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Creating RSS?

I have to say that this article is a disappointment. It explains how to read RSS feeds, then there are long parts about the history and incompatibilities, some other minor stuff and two bloated examples. Absolutely nothing on how to create an RSS feed! That's half of the whole concept anyway! I think the various XML-tags used in RSS files need to be described. The examples mean nothing when there are no explanations either. Also, are those files supposed to be done with Notepad or are there possibly dedicated editors? Automatic feed generators? How do you publish your feed? Do you need special server equipment, scripts, something else? --ZeroOne (talk | @) 16:31, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Although this article can certainly be improved, we are told that Wikipedia is not an instruction manual. See WP:NOT#IINFO item 4. There is also no burning need in this case. If you Google for 'creating RSS' you will get 98.7 million hits, so the information should be easy to find elsewhere. I agree with your point about the bloated examples we use. Do you have a suggestion for improvement? Don't forget to look at the Web feeds article, which is a bit more practical than this one; this one is more like computer science. EdJohnston 18:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting we should have an instruction manual, but we should have about as much text from the administrator point of view as we have from the client point of view under the Usage-header, which isn't much either. The current Usage chapter can hardly be classified as an instruction manual, right? Actually I think the article is currently violating the "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" rule that you linked to by completely neglecting the RSS administrator point of view and only discussing the subject from the end user point of view.

As for the examples, I'd remove the RSS 1.0 one and remove all but one <item>s from the second one. Then all the tags left should be described. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 20:13, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

I feel there should be a link to a tool that can create RSS feeds for those who aren't technically minded, for example irisfeed.com. By submitting a URL, an RSS 2.0 feed is automatically generated and updated for you. This could be included under External Links? Egg 20:03, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

The present article is mostly for those who are technically-minded, since it presents RSS from a computer science point of view. As you will see in the comments just above, the type of resource you are proposing to add is found by the millions in any Google search, so it is not a service to our readers to add it here. EdJohnston 21:41, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I agree to EdJohnston's remarks. [[User:DyreenS[NNSCST]] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.127.228.8 (talk) 09:34, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Merge suggestion

I have recommended merging Attention stream into RSS. Chevinki 01:53, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Agree: Article is a Dissapointment

Usually when I know very little about a subject, I come to Wikipedia for a good overview. This article was disappointing.

How do the pieces fit together? Does the RSS reader typically poll the site providing the feed? Does the sitr providing the feed typically create the outgoing feed for each request, or cache it periodically? If my reader polls the feeding site periodically, how does it tell which items are new, and which were seen before? Are these even the right questions to be asking?

Instead, this article has a lot of history and arcana that I just don't care about right now. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 134.174.140.32 (talk) 18:33, 12 March 2007 (UTC).

Well do edit remembering Wikipedia:Attribution, ie all material should be sourced from a reliable source. I dont actually know if your questions are answerable, lots of sites make up RSS feeds and they do say in individual ways for the most part from what I can see, SqueakBox 18:46, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Add New External Link to an Essay

• Aspects of the Mass Media. Short essay on the mass media; its history and development.

I don't see that this belongs in the RSS article. The citation you have proposed looks like a personal blog, it has no references, and it doesn't appear to have any information about the RSS definition or history that exceeds what is already in the Wikipedia article. In the past people have constantly tried to add external links to this article, so we are reluctant to add something that is not a clearcut improvement. See WP:EL for Wikipedia policy on external links. EdJohnston 00:58, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

RSS / PodCast Conversion

You can convert your RSS / PodCast to PHP, and Javascript.

• RSSConverters RSS2JS, RSS2PHP, PodCast2PHP, and PodCast2JS

Thanks for your note, but see WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided for reasons why this type of link would not be appropriate for the RSS article. EdJohnston 17:15, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Our RSS article is said to be ranked #4 in Google among all Wikipedia articles

According to a this posting by an anonymous contributor on Talk:The Long Tail, this Google search brings up our RSS article as having the fourth-highest Google rank of any Wikipedia article. This could be an argument for someone to spend time improving the article! (See the original posting for the logic behing this claim). On the off-chance that the submitter's argument is correct, here are the top ten articles in Wikipedia:

1. Main Page
2. http://www.wikipedia.org
3. Podcast
4. RSS
5. Hurricane Katrina
6. Blog
7. Germany
8. Italy
9. China
10. Greece

EdJohnston 16:39, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

RSS FAQ

Why do we have an internal link to RSS FAQ when the page does not exist in the further information section? I have removed this as it seems pointless if you can't read anymore about it.

Adam 01:44, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Incomprehensible

Text currently states:

Effectively, this the format without an owner, just as it was becoming widely used.

Compare:

Pitifully, this dog without an owner, just as it was becoming widely appreciated.

Meaning? P0M 21:25, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Fixed. This the format -> This left the format. EdJohnston 05:11, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

RSS is not ownerless

The article currently states of RSS that "Effectively, this left the format without an owner, just as it was becoming widely used."

RSS does not lack an owner. Netscape created and named the protocol, and thus has the trademark rights and copyright associated with the format. It's more accurate to say that the absence of Netscape from active participation in RSS development left a vacuum that has made all future development of the format highly contentious, with different groups including UserLand Software, Harvard, the RSS Advisory Board and RSS-DEV Working Group each claiming the right to publish successive versions that sprang from either RSS 0.90 or RSS 0.91. Jamesdennis 15:30, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

James, I like your recent update of the lead paragraph. It seems more clear now!

With regards to Netscape possessing any trademark or copyright, I think that would need to be shown from reliable sources if we were to ever consider adding it to the article. Even Dave Winer's copyright of the RSS 2.0 spec (the one now at Harvard) seems a bit fishy. Was he the only writer on that document? Wasn't it the result of an informal collaboration? Did the other participants assign their copyrights to him? Didn't he reuse any text from older specs? Similar questions might be asked about any possible Netscape copyright. EdJohnston 17:36, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

RSS 2.0 spec controversy

This edit must be the one in which Dave Winer changed our RSS article, to replace the link to the Cadenhead version of the RSS 2.0 spec with the one hosted at Harvard that he favors. He commented on the situation here on his Scripting News blog. There has also been some discussion lately on various blogs as to what the difference is between the two warring specs. (Apparently not much; one comment is here). Certainly our policies allow Dave Winer or any other person who might be covered by an article to comment on the Talk page, so this comment (April 30) seems a little harsh:

Then I decided to look at the RSS page to see if it linked to the RSS 2.0 spec. It didn't, so I added a link. I haven't been back to see if that has been reverted. BTW, most of that page is worthless, things that never happened, Rove-like spin from god knows who. That's the thing about Wikipedia, it's a free-for-all slamfest, and you don't have a right to confront your accusers. Feh

EdJohnston 15:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm the chairman of the RSS Advisory Board. The RSS 2.0 spec link on the External Links section is significantly out of date. The current version, updated most recently this month to clarify namespace support in RSS, is published here. Our position, as the publisher of the spec since 2003, is that people should use http://www.rssboard.org/rss-specification when linking to the spec, not older versions archived elsewhere. Rcade 15:10, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank for for participating here. Atom is working its way through the IETF draft process. But my understanding is that no current version of RSS is issued by a standards organization, so we merely have two informal groups with competing documents. If your argument is found convincing by other Wikipedians, your document would at most be recognized as the 'official RSS spec of the RSS Advisory Board.' How would you be able to show that this is the world standard for the RSS spec? What about Dave Winer's copyright?

Perhaps you might have an opinion whether this question should make much difference to Wikipedia readers. See [5] for a recent blog post claiming that there is little difference between the RSS Board spec and Dave Winer's spec.

If you believe there's a significant difference, and if you could compose a sentence or two summarizing the differences, maybe a comment should be added to the article. EdJohnston 02:57, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. Atom's syndication format has completed the IETF process. The thing that's still working its way through is the publishing protocol. As for RSS, I'm just pointing out that we're doing exactly what we've done since our group was founded by Brent Simmons, Jon Udell and Dave Winer. Winer has a different position today on all of this, but as someone he asked to join the board in 2004 and a member ever since, I think he's rewriting history. The significant difference between Winer's archived spec and the current spec, in sentences you can consider for inclusion on Wikipedia: "In June 2007, the RSS Advisory Board revised the specification to reflect our judgment that RSS 2.0 permits namespaces to extend core elements with namespace attributes, as Microsoft is doing in Internet Explorer 7. A difference of interpretation left publishers unsure of whether this was permitted or forbidden." The board can't force others to accept our role in RSS as official. But it's my hope that with our public voting and the inclusion of members from all over the RSS development community, we've created a framework for resolving contentious subjects like this namespace issue. Rcade 15:13, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your draft comment about namespaces. I changed the article so it now links to both versions of the spec, and it now contains most of your two sentences. If can see any other possible improvements to the article text let us know. EdJohnston 16:20, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

The current text points to a mailing list post of mine, in which it is claimed that I cite three specific differences between the two specs. I did nothing of the sort. It was Sam that was claiming those three areas were different, and I was disagreeing with him. In any event, none of that discussion is particularly relevant here - it was just a misunderstanding. Sam was referring to a different document altogether. j4_james 21:58, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what the bottom line was in the on-line conversation (difference or no difference) but in any event I took out the reference to your posting. Have you been able to determine whether the two specs are the same? EdJohnston 22:24, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

New gimmick has been added to the article for syntax highlighting in the RSS examples

User:Ramir provided this explanation of his recent change to the article. For the full comment see User_talk:EdJohnston#XML_syntax_highlighting_on_RSS:

Yes, they installed a MediaWiki extension for highlighting of computer programming code: see bugzilla:7163. It is as official as wiki syntax is. And if you ask me how this works... well, it works very poorly (hideous colours, no inline option, ignorance of the standard wiki syntax et c.) To use it, just tag the code with <source lang="xml">...</source>, where "xml" could be some other programming/markup language of the many supported by the GeSHi extension. Ramir 09:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

EdJohnston 21:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Editors

I've merged a list of editors, which were on a separate page, but none of them seem notable; leastways not notable enough to have their own article. Do wee need them? Andy Mabbett 11:09, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

It has now been put back at RSS editor. Andy Mabbett 16:57, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Other people seem to have restored the separate article. I don't like the kind of list that includes every product of a certain kind that is on the market, which is what RSS editor constitutes. I think it's more reasonable to mention here in the RSS article that such programs exist, and perhaps give an example of one of them that's been externally reviewed, to illustrate the genre. If that were done I'd be happy to see the separate RSS editor article deleted. It puzzles me exactly what these things would be used for. Who wants to bother creating an RSS feed manually? It might be worth getting an explanation of what the actual need is. EdJohnston 21:03, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Some of this recent activity may be due to the fact that I removed the entire (apparently "new") "Editors" section earlier today. It was rapidly growing into a list of random "I can advertise my software here!" links. In theory, I don't mind a mention of these tools and one or two prominent example. In practice, however, it rarely works out that way without constant babysitting to remove the inevitable link spam. --ElKevbo 21:11, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

Image:RSS icon.svg and Image:XML feed button example.png

Forgive me if I've missed any discussion on this here or in the archive, but shouldn't the two aforementioned images ( and )be included in the article? I realize that the Mozilla feed icon has replaced these symbols in many situations, but these were the original icons maintained, they are still plentiful out there, and they would add to the comprehensive nature of the article. Craig R. Nielsen 19:19, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Article does not mention hashing in RSS protocol. Does RSS support hashing to minimize amount of transfered data?

When I check an RSS feed for updates I have to download ~1 KiB of data each time. If I check 10 feeds for updates once a minute, I waste a lot of bandwidth for downloading the exact same content. Is it possible to just download a little hash of the complete RSS feed data I would normally download? And then download the whole RSS feed data if my client notices that the hash has changed for that particular feed? I could not find any mention of this possibility neither in the article nor in this talk page. Tommy 09:00, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

This is an intrinsic feature of HTTP called ETags (see RFC2616 section 3.11). Not all servers and clients support it, mind you, but the option is available if they care about bandwidth usage. j4_james

GeoRSS not yet notable

I'd like to remove GeoRSS from the See Also section of this article. While there is a GeoRSS article that claims that it is an 'emerging standard,' and it shows that Yahoo and Google provide some support for any RSS feeds that might use it, the article contains no third party references that show any widespread use of GeoRSS in published RSS freeds. There is no assertion that the GeoRSS proposal is on any standards track, at W3C or elsewhere. It seems to be the product of a small organization called the Open Geospatial Consortium. There is a roadmap, but it has no entries in it. Lacking more details, I argue that GeoRSS is only a proposal, and is not yet mainstream enough for the RSS article to link to it. Please comment if you have opinions on this. EdJohnston 14:34, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Use the same example

I think it would make much more sense if the two examples of the RSS feeds had the same content them, but in different formats (1.00 and 2.00, respectively). It would better show the differences between the two formats. MasterDragon 15:43, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Cleanup tag on History section

On my User Talk, Boffob left this comment about his reason for the Cleanup tag. EdJohnston 17:31, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

It just seems sprawling, includes events that may have little to no long-term historical significance (WP:NOT), has completely unnecessary external links within the text (WP:LINKS), etc. That's why I just put a general cleanup tag. I don't know how many times I have added cleanup tags or simply removed history sections (those with actually no historical content to speak of) of internet technology articles (especially articles about recent companies in the business with such sections).--Boffob 22:03, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I tried my best to clean it up and focus on the timeline of the RSS 0.90/1.0 branch and the 0.91/2.0 branch, along with a mention of how Atom fits in. As part of this, I think the Atom section is redundant and should be removed. Jamesdennis 17:06, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

User:Jamesdennis's rewrite of the History section seems good. My only comment would be that this article is overloaded on history, and the nuances of the different RSS X.YY versions are no longer all that relevant. Most reader programs take the new versions of all formats, so far as I can tell. I like the balance and motivation that James has achieved in his version, and suggest that much of his new text be considered for moving to History of web syndication technology. A shorter version could be left in the RSS article. In any case I support his suggestion that the Atom section be removed. EdJohnston 17:16, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Per the discussion here, the Atom section has been removed. I think Atom's adequately covered in the history section and on its own page. Jamesdennis 20:30, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Looks good to me. The only remaining mystery would be, 'Did the world really need the Atom spec? Exactly what types of things was RSS unable to deal with?' Since this is a mystery that may not have occurred to most RSS users, who simply use RSS (or Atom) and don't perceive any remaining problems, I suppose it's not a burning question. Our article suggests that Atom was developed because the RSS spec was frozen. EdJohnston 20:49, 20 October 2007 (UTC)