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I think arguing RSS versus Atom is like reorganizing deck chairs on the Titanic: It's a stupid waste of discussion points, because they are so interchangeable.

I think arguing RSS versus Atom is like reorganizing deck chairs on the Titanic: It's a stupid waste of discussion points, because they are so interchangeable. Let's focus on the general concept of getting feed readers back in to vogue, then push our preferred format.

chrismorgan 5y ago
It’s not terribly common in general, but in content about HTML, if you put things like HTML tag names in titles, it will get mangled by some (most?) feed readers if the feed is RSS. I’ve seen such titles that are broken because the publishers didn’t use Atom more than a few times, and written a couple of titles myself that show up fine because I produce Atom rather than RSS. (I also put things like <em> and <code> in my titles for italics and monospacing, though most feed readers will strip that out and reduce HTML titles to plain text. The almost universal convention that titles are plain text with no formatting is silly.) RSS is worse than Atom in real, practical ways. Unless there’s a concrete reason for you to use RSS (which largely means “it’s a podcast”), you should use Atom, because it will protect your content against being mangled when you have things like less than signs and ampersands in it. Returning back to the matter of the naming: I think there are two sound reasons to stop calling it “RSS” and start calling it “feeds”: ① Using one specific, inferior technology to describe it is factually wrong, and perpetuates the wrongness and inferiority, because people hear of RSS and so implement RSS, rather than Atom. ② When someone isn’t familiar with the stuff, “RSS” is just a meaningless name (or could remind you of other organisations that use the acronym, e.g. in India it means commonly-extremist Hindu nationalism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashtriya_Swayamsevak_Sangh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashtriya_Swayamsevak_Sangh), but “feeds” invokes a concept that is more likely to be familiar and immediately understood.

chrismorgan 5y ago

It’s not terribly common in general, but in content about HTML, if you put things like HTML tag names in titles, it will get mangled by some (most?) feed readers if the feed is RSS. I’ve seen such titles that are broken because the publishers didn’t use Atom more than a few times, and written a couple of titles myself that show up fine because I produce Atom rather than RSS. (I also put things like <em> and <code> in my titles for italics and monospacing, though most feed readers will strip that out and reduce HTML titles to plain text. The almost universal convention that titles are plain text with no formatting is silly.) RSS is worse than Atom in real, practical ways. Unless there’s a concrete reason for you to use RSS (which largely means “it’s a podcast”), you should use Atom, because it will protect your content against being mangled when you have things like less than signs and ampersands in it. Returning back to the matter of the naming: I think there are two sound reasons to stop calling it “RSS” and start calling it “feeds”: ① Using one specific, inferior technology to describe it is factually wrong, and perpetuates the wrongness and inferiority, because people hear of RSS and so implement RSS, rather than Atom. ② When someone isn’t familiar with the stuff, “RSS” is just a meaningless name (or could remind you of other organisations that use the acronym, e.g. in India it means commonly-extremist Hindu nationalism, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashtriya_Swayamsevak_Sangh https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashtriya_Swayamsevak_Sangh), but “feeds” invokes a concept that is more likely to be familiar and immediately understood.