5 ms·

Same problem with SSL encryption. But with both RSS and SSL, if the user use a modern client, he shouldn't bother if its internally using RSS, Atom, SSL or TLS.

by moehm 5y ago

Same problem with SSL encryption. But with both RSS and SSL, if the user use a modern client, he shouldn't bother if its internally using RSS, Atom, SSL or TLS. I for one know most of my pals do know about RSS, but haven't heard the term 'Atom feed'.

chrismorgan 5y ago
“SSL” is finally dying as a term; the significant majority of what I see calls it TLS now. But the problem didn’t exist in the same way with SSL/TLS: SSL was actively killed off in favour of TLS so that regardless of what you call it, you’re actually dealing with TLS. But with feeds, RSS is still supported, and so the mindshare problem happens: people hear about RSS and so implement the inferior and problematic RSS rather than Atom, because they’ve never even heard of Atom and so don’t know that it’s what they should have implemented instead, because it’s more robust. Calling feeds RSS perpetuates RSS, which is undesirable. I say just advertise it as “feeds”, not “RSS feeds”. Atom is an implementation detail, just like RSS should be. (Well, RSS should be dead in general feeds, with only podcast feeds keeping it alive.)
- bscphil 5y ago
  > I say just advertise it as “feeds”, not “RSS feeds”. I think that's even worse. For most ordinary people that has a bunch of unintended meanings. "My Facebook has a feed, do you mean subscribing to your site on Facebook? Why do I see a bunch of code when I click the link?"
  - slightwinder 5y ago
    I think it's the oposite. People continuing calling it RSS is limiting there understanding of this domain. Most people are all about RSS this, reviving that and talk about the specific format, instead of the purpose for which RSS is actually used. This also leads to rather poor solutions and discussions which are just reinventing the old stuff again and again, instead of letting the domain evolve to match modern demand. Take for example this project here. Is there any feedreader out there who has this built-in to make it comfortable for the user to use this? The state of tooling as I know it is still at the level were we have seperate tools which pushes out a newsfeed-format, which than must be maintainend seperatly in our feedreaders. Which is an extraordinary hazzle to maintain configurations on multiple places.
    - bscphil 5y ago
      > Take for example this project here. Is there any feedreader out there who has this built-in to make it comfortable for the user to use this? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question. This project is easy to use in all feed readers precisely because it just generates a feed URL that you can subscribe to like any other feed. On the other hand, maybe you're asking why the feed readers don't have this feature built in. Some of them do! The one I've used for years, Inoreader, has it, although it might be a premium feature. On the other other hand, sometimes it seems from your comment like your issue is with the very idea of RSS. That a website can publish a feed in a well-defined / open format and that feed can then be consumed by any conforming reader. That's as I see it the beauty of the whole system. I don't need to use the site itself, if it sucks. I can subscribe to anything I like using whatever software I like, rather than relying on a centralized service. What's the alternative, something like Twitter where I subscribe to a bunch of accounts and they push whatever they like into my feed?
justshowpost 5y ago
SSL is TLS looks similar but aren't the same. Today, we use TLS.

by moehm 5y ago

chrismorgan 5y ago

“SSL” is finally dying as a term; the significant majority of what I see calls it TLS now. But the problem didn’t exist in the same way with SSL/TLS: SSL was actively killed off in favour of TLS so that regardless of what you call it, you’re actually dealing with TLS. But with feeds, RSS is still supported, and so the mindshare problem happens: people hear about RSS and so implement the inferior and problematic RSS rather than Atom, because they’ve never even heard of Atom and so don’t know that it’s what they should have implemented instead, because it’s more robust. Calling feeds RSS perpetuates RSS, which is undesirable. I say just advertise it as “feeds”, not “RSS feeds”. Atom is an implementation detail, just like RSS should be. (Well, RSS should be dead in general feeds, with only podcast feeds keeping it alive.)

bscphil 5y ago
> I say just advertise it as “feeds”, not “RSS feeds”. I think that's even worse. For most ordinary people that has a bunch of unintended meanings. "My Facebook has a feed, do you mean subscribing to your site on Facebook? Why do I see a bunch of code when I click the link?"
- slightwinder 5y ago
  I think it's the oposite. People continuing calling it RSS is limiting there understanding of this domain. Most people are all about RSS this, reviving that and talk about the specific format, instead of the purpose for which RSS is actually used. This also leads to rather poor solutions and discussions which are just reinventing the old stuff again and again, instead of letting the domain evolve to match modern demand. Take for example this project here. Is there any feedreader out there who has this built-in to make it comfortable for the user to use this? The state of tooling as I know it is still at the level were we have seperate tools which pushes out a newsfeed-format, which than must be maintainend seperatly in our feedreaders. Which is an extraordinary hazzle to maintain configurations on multiple places.
  - bscphil 5y ago
    > Take for example this project here. Is there any feedreader out there who has this built-in to make it comfortable for the user to use this? Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question. This project is easy to use in all feed readers precisely because it just generates a feed URL that you can subscribe to like any other feed. On the other hand, maybe you're asking why the feed readers don't have this feature built in. Some of them do! The one I've used for years, Inoreader, has it, although it might be a premium feature. On the other other hand, sometimes it seems from your comment like your issue is with the very idea of RSS. That a website can publish a feed in a well-defined / open format and that feed can then be consumed by any conforming reader. That's as I see it the beauty of the whole system. I don't need to use the site itself, if it sucks. I can subscribe to anything I like using whatever software I like, rather than relying on a centralized service. What's the alternative, something like Twitter where I subscribe to a bunch of accounts and they push whatever they like into my feed?

justshowpost 5y ago

SSL is TLS looks similar but aren't the same. Today, we use TLS.