6 ms·

Are we really abandoning established, stable protocols because we don't like the serialisation format they use? The practical difference here between XML and JS

Are we really abandoning established, stable protocols because we don't like the serialisation format they use? The practical difference here between XML and JSON is negligible, the value here comes from the ecosystem (which is extensive on the RSS/atom side, and non-existent on the other). As a user, you'll never interact with the XML. As a developer, if you're interacting with the XML rather than using one of the many, MANY, libraries, you're doing something wrong.

j45 2y ago
The comment read to me more about distribution that has some network effect. RSS/atom is fine.
- rednafi 2y ago
  Not sure I fully understand what you mean by distribution here. What I meant is that the ratio of personal blogs supporting RSS to the total number of blogs is too low, indicating a lack of adoption. I’ve emailed many technical writers whose work I liked, asking them to add feed support, and most didn’t bother. One possible reason could be the protocol itself and the fragmentation between RSS, Atom, JSON RSS, etc.—or it could be something else entirely.
rednafi 2y ago
Not saying we need to abandon it, but I’m not a big fan of RSS itself. Yes, there’s an ecosystem, but it’s neither extensive nor mainstream. Feed readers are hit or miss, and I haven’t found one I like. Subscribing to 50 people is enough to make the feed unusable since there’s little to no organization. While this isn’t entirely the protocol’s fault, its poor state is largely due to its lack of mainstream adoption—too few people care about it. The protocol itself might also be part of the problem. So discoverability is still a problem because not enough people care about the existing solutions.
- netghost 2y ago
  Okay, I'll shill my feed reader since it's an example of one that lets you organize feeds and doesn't present a firehose: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brook-feed-reader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brook-feed-re... It's only for Firefox though because I like my reader being integrated into my browser and Firefox was the only one that supported a sidebar at the time. Looks like Chrome supports sidebars to now. So mayhaps I'll update it.
  - rednafi 2y ago
    Shilling is welcome as long as it’s not corporate ;) Love FF, this looks promising.
- basscomm 2y ago
  > Subscribing to 50 people is enough to make the feed unusable since there’s little to no organization. What kind of organization do you want? Every feed reader I've ever used let me categorize/organize feeds in whatever way I wanted, but it's a manual process.
  - rednafi 2y ago
    Exactly this, but with some automatic content grouping. Also, the ability to read the whole content in the reader instead of having to go to the site. But that depends on how RSS/Atom exposes the content; this is why I am not a big fan of the protocol. Too much fragmentation: RSS, RSS2, Atom.
    - jasonpbecker 2y ago
      A lot of services, (like Feedbin in my prior reply) and a lot of reader applications will permit different ways of viewing the data to get full content to appear even in truncated feeds. That said, non-full content feeds are pretty rare outside of corporate media.
    - netghost 2y ago
      Honestly, I don't think it's a problem with RSS as a format. It's a problem with clients.
    - basscomm 2y ago
      I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 'automatic content grouping'. Are you talking about somehow automatically grouping the posts from disparate sites into buckets based on some criteria? Newsboat, for example, lets you do this with tags and queries: https://newsboat.org/releases/2.19/docs/newsboat.html#_query_feeds https://newsboat.org/releases/2.19/docs/newsboat.html#_query... I'm also not sure what fragmentation has to do with anything. I don't think I've used a feed reader that didn't understand all current flavors of RSS and Atom, so it makes absolutely no difference what the webmaster decided to use, my news reader can figure it out. It is a little bit annoying when the webmaster doesn't put the full text of the article in the news feed, and instead wants you to actually visit their site to read their stuff. I'd guess that they do that to make sure that you actually visit the site once in a while and might accidentally view an ad so they can make a few cents or they hope that you might see something else on their site you might be interested in or whatever. It also saves some bandwidth by not downloading the full text of an article if it turns out that I wasn't interested in it.
- jasonpbecker 2y ago
  I don't really know what you mean. There's a ton of feed readers, both from an application and server side. I don't really need a lot of organization, but I've never seen a reader without support for folders. If you need more than one layer of hierarchy at 50 blogs... I have no idea what you're doing. I follow like 250 blogs and have just two folders, maybe, and it's super maintainable. Anyway, services like Feedbin have been going strong for a long time, have a rock solid syncing system with great tools for things like seeing frequency of posting and abandoned or moved feeds, folders, automatic filters, and broad support in the app ecosystem if you don't like their apps or web experience (which is very good). RSS is absolutely extensive and has millions of users. It's at least as mainstream as Mastodon/ActivityPub, it's just not talked about as such, and that's _excluding_ Podcasts as a use case.
- jevndev 2y ago
  [dead]
- immibis 2y ago
  WE have been letting that ecosystem rot. Maybe it's time to fix it up. A lot of these old internet projects were developed by one person to scratch a personal itch. That doesn't seem to happen so much these days - we expect companies to do it for profit.

j45 2y ago

The comment read to me more about distribution that has some network effect. RSS/atom is fine.

rednafi 2y ago
Not sure I fully understand what you mean by distribution here. What I meant is that the ratio of personal blogs supporting RSS to the total number of blogs is too low, indicating a lack of adoption. I’ve emailed many technical writers whose work I liked, asking them to add feed support, and most didn’t bother. One possible reason could be the protocol itself and the fragmentation between RSS, Atom, JSON RSS, etc.—or it could be something else entirely.

rednafi 2y ago

Not saying we need to abandon it, but I’m not a big fan of RSS itself. Yes, there’s an ecosystem, but it’s neither extensive nor mainstream. Feed readers are hit or miss, and I haven’t found one I like. Subscribing to 50 people is enough to make the feed unusable since there’s little to no organization. While this isn’t entirely the protocol’s fault, its poor state is largely due to its lack of mainstream adoption—too few people care about it. The protocol itself might also be part of the problem. So discoverability is still a problem because not enough people care about the existing solutions.

netghost 2y ago
Okay, I'll shill my feed reader since it's an example of one that lets you organize feeds and doesn't present a firehose: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brook-feed-reader/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/brook-feed-re... It's only for Firefox though because I like my reader being integrated into my browser and Firefox was the only one that supported a sidebar at the time. Looks like Chrome supports sidebars to now. So mayhaps I'll update it.
- rednafi 2y ago
  Shilling is welcome as long as it’s not corporate ;) Love FF, this looks promising.
basscomm 2y ago
> Subscribing to 50 people is enough to make the feed unusable since there’s little to no organization. What kind of organization do you want? Every feed reader I've ever used let me categorize/organize feeds in whatever way I wanted, but it's a manual process.
- rednafi 2y ago
  Exactly this, but with some automatic content grouping. Also, the ability to read the whole content in the reader instead of having to go to the site. But that depends on how RSS/Atom exposes the content; this is why I am not a big fan of the protocol. Too much fragmentation: RSS, RSS2, Atom.
  - jasonpbecker 2y ago
    A lot of services, (like Feedbin in my prior reply) and a lot of reader applications will permit different ways of viewing the data to get full content to appear even in truncated feeds. That said, non-full content feeds are pretty rare outside of corporate media.
  - netghost 2y ago
    Honestly, I don't think it's a problem with RSS as a format. It's a problem with clients.
  - basscomm 2y ago
    I'm not sure I understand what you mean by 'automatic content grouping'. Are you talking about somehow automatically grouping the posts from disparate sites into buckets based on some criteria? Newsboat, for example, lets you do this with tags and queries: https://newsboat.org/releases/2.19/docs/newsboat.html#_query_feeds https://newsboat.org/releases/2.19/docs/newsboat.html#_query... I'm also not sure what fragmentation has to do with anything. I don't think I've used a feed reader that didn't understand all current flavors of RSS and Atom, so it makes absolutely no difference what the webmaster decided to use, my news reader can figure it out. It is a little bit annoying when the webmaster doesn't put the full text of the article in the news feed, and instead wants you to actually visit their site to read their stuff. I'd guess that they do that to make sure that you actually visit the site once in a while and might accidentally view an ad so they can make a few cents or they hope that you might see something else on their site you might be interested in or whatever. It also saves some bandwidth by not downloading the full text of an article if it turns out that I wasn't interested in it.
jasonpbecker 2y ago
I don't really know what you mean. There's a ton of feed readers, both from an application and server side. I don't really need a lot of organization, but I've never seen a reader without support for folders. If you need more than one layer of hierarchy at 50 blogs... I have no idea what you're doing. I follow like 250 blogs and have just two folders, maybe, and it's super maintainable. Anyway, services like Feedbin have been going strong for a long time, have a rock solid syncing system with great tools for things like seeing frequency of posting and abandoned or moved feeds, folders, automatic filters, and broad support in the app ecosystem if you don't like their apps or web experience (which is very good). RSS is absolutely extensive and has millions of users. It's at least as mainstream as Mastodon/ActivityPub, it's just not talked about as such, and that's _excluding_ Podcasts as a use case.
jevndev 2y ago
[dead]
immibis 2y ago
WE have been letting that ecosystem rot. Maybe it's time to fix it up. A lot of these old internet projects were developed by one person to scratch a personal itch. That doesn't seem to happen so much these days - we expect companies to do it for profit.