It is not every day that you get a call from someone like
Tim Bray.
Aaron Swartz has
done an amazing job recruiting support. And I am pleased to
see Dave
Winer acknowledging that this effort exists.
A few comments on Tim's piece. His comment on my
scattering sand over the tracks made me laugh. A bit of
explanation: my experience with open source has taught me a number
of things. Most importantly in this context is
Sunir's
corollary: "As long as the project looks like one
person's work, it is one person's work."
Tim's comment on liking to continue to call the results RSS made
me wince. The RSS 2.0 spec
is very clear
on this subject.
Road map from here on out? I'm going to pick a topic at a
time from the
wiki and
explore it in depth on my weblog.
Sam - well done for taking the initiave and generating a lot of enthusiasm for your efforts. I'm just a web developer - but how can I help?
I think the main reason why the RSS 1.0 highjacking attempt "failed", was that it offended the sensibility of regular RSS publishers/users. I think there is no reason why a second highjacking attempt (this time done right) could not succeed....
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Isofarro: kudos on putting your provocative opinions on your site, and your respectful offer to help here. I'm "just" a web developer myself. What weblogging software do you use? Let's make sure that whatever we come up with meets your needs too.
Már: kudos on your innovative use of trackback. I'm not going to spend a lot of my time thinking about naming. But I do think that in order to fix a number of things, a fresh start is required. There is too much confusion as to what is permissible and what is preferred. Check back in a few days and see what you think.
Sam - I wrote my own blogging software. I got tired of "all-in-one-page" Blogger and I wanted to build a blog that fits into how I think rather vice versa. Once a comments section is done, I think I'll have a blogging system I'm happier with. At that point I'll probably need to get my head around trackbacks.
If I can add something positive and constructive, I will. At the moment I'm not up to speed with the discussions on your wiki (just the positive comments about it) - so that's the first thing for me to do.
Sam is in good form. Finally the "we care about the tag format" gang are getting together and sharing, playing with each others blocks. His wiki has made this possible. Amazing how that works eh? ...
Sam Ruby points to the Road Map for creating a new weblog syndication format, developed as a joint effort by a number of impressive people. Being rather new to all of this weblog stuff, I've started out to find out...
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Some thoughts on the issue of Pie. Why a new format? Because the Pie working group hates David Winer. Some of the same people in this new working were also part of the RSS 1.0 team. They tried to hijack RSS from Dave back then and failed. Why did...
Sam Ruby: It is not every day that you get a call from someone like Tim Bray. Aaron Swartz has done an amazing job recruiting support. And I am pleased to see Dave Winer acknowledging that this effort exists... ...Road map from here on...
I agree about 95% with Mark on not calling it RSS - it would probably be the kiss of death. Only 95% because I wouldn't withdraw my support, as even if the results aren't generally adopted it will still have been a worthwhile analysis exercise (and interesting group activity). Also just having another name might not be enough to prevent the FUD.
I'm not 100% sold on the idea of a new syndication format (although I think a new archive format and API would be great), but if it happens, it should absolutely be called something other than "RSS". Two things with the same name are quite enough, thanks.
Grassroots Movement for a New Syndication Standard
Mena Trott's (co-founder/creator of Moveable Type) post on Six Log today points to a movement to come up with a new syndication format that hopes to overcome the shortcomings of RSS. RSS has a long and somewhat embarrassing history (Mark......
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Off to Vienna in a couple of hours - so don't expect any more blogging until the weekend. Talk amongst yourselves until then. Oh, and if you've got nothing better to do then at least go here and support Sam......
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The Wiki for the "conceptual model of a log entry" that Sam Ruby started a few days ago (as I was mentioning here) has been gathering speed. After reading through most of the material I started contributing some of my thoughts today (after all, this...
Off to Vienna in a couple of hours - so don't expect any more blogging until the weekend. Talk amongst yourselves until then. Oh, and if you've got nothing better to do then at least go here and support Sam who's defining a new weblog syndication...
Sam,
When you say "explore it in depth" does this mean that it will get more than an hour on the Wiki before someone decides it's consensus? Does this format have to be leaving the servers by the weekend? I know that in some ways this is out of your hands, but I'd still like to hear your opinion.
It's starting to look like a lot of people had already decided what they want to see, and that is RSS 2.0 with a little tweak here and there.
Ok, maybe there'd be benefit in getting such a format more into the public domain, but personally I thought this would be a good opportunity to take a fresh look. A name change here and there will need extra work on tools, but for what real benefit if it's just RSS 2.0 repackaged?
Danny is referring to my refactoring of SyntaxConsiderations, which was good and necessary. But after separating and analyzing all 4 intertwingled discussions, I prematurely declared consensus on the various points, which was bad and unnecessary. I've updated the page to reflect this and deleted various people's equally unnecessary snippy comments.
Wikis are not weblogs! If you want to be productive, do it on the wiki! If you disagree with a refactoring, refactor again! If you just want to bitch, do it on your weblog!
Sam's wiki discussion continues full throttle. The conversation and collaboration on the Echo wiki has been nothing short of amazing and the result good so far. Shelley Powers makes an excellent post to summarize the action so far. The pace is...
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Sam Ruby started a Wiki on The Conceptual Model of a Log Entry. On the issue of proposed new syndication format, which I presume it would be more than just syndication, there’s a Roadmap to New Log Format. The idea......
Sam, thanks. I still think we can get something very good.
Mark, it was in part that particular refactoring. I found it very annoying that not only was a line I'd marked 'refactor not ok' (after it had prevously been deleted) moved to a different (not altogether relevant) page, but also consensus had been decided in my one-hour absence.
Refactor yes please, but please with a lighter hand. A lot of the anti-namespaces talk (with which I personally disagree) also got shunted out of the way, when it was clear there were still disagreements. The discussion was replaced by links to exmples of an apparently finished format!
Danny, I think you're overreacting here. The page consisted of 4 distinct discussions; it really needed to be refactored in order for any of those discussions to continue productively. Really. SyntaxConsiderations is linked from FrontPage, so this is a high-traffic area. Now that the conversations are separated, the ones that need to continue are continuing, and others are cooling. Perhaps there was more consensus there than you thought.
The links to examples were already there; I didn't add them.
Finally, if you don't like the examples people are scratching out, don't just add comments like "I'd like to see some other examples" (seen on EchoExample) -- COME UP WITH YOUR OWN AND POST THEM! This is not a spectator sport.
Actually, for some of us it is a spectator sport - for the most part - but the point stands. One's own blog is a great place for sideline comments from the Peanut Gallery.
The Echo wiki has been nothing short of amazing and the result good so far, but I'm not terribly thrilled with the Echo Example syntax proposals that have been posted recently. My concern is that the primary proposal seem like a reinvention of the...
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Sam is in good form. Finally the "we care about the tag format" gang are getting together and sharing, playing with each others blocks. His wiki has made this possible. Amazing how that works eh? ...
What Blog Posting APIs are supported by MSN Spaces?
I've seen a number of people ask if MSN Spaces supports any web service APIs such as the Blogger API or MetaWeblog API that allow users to post to their blog from applications such as MarsEdit, BlogJet and w:bloggar. This...