[wp-hackers] RSS Decisions

[Robert Deaton]

On 1/17/06, Mike Little <mike at zed1.com> wrote:
> On 1/17/06, Danny Ayers <danny.ayers at gmail.com> wrote:
> >     As a WordPress user, I like to have options. I want to be able to
> > choose the format of RSS feeds that I publish. I don't want to be told
> > what format is the "standard" format and what format is the "right"
> > format.
> >
>
> I can't really see any need to remove any of the supported formats.
>

While having choices is all good and well, things need to be
deprecated over time, if we're moving toward a semantic web, the
sooner the new replaces the old, the better. If I had to pick any one
feed to remove, it would the current Atom feed to be replaced with
Atom 1.0. When I asked why we wouldn't have Atom 1.0 in WordPress 2.0,
this was vaguely my response:

"Not enough readers support it."
"If we never include it, why would any readers be prompted to support
it? Why can't we just give it another filename, like we did for RSS2?"
"Because we didn't name wp-atom.php wp-atom0.3.php at first."

I can see the arguements about RDF being left in, and if someone will
step up to support them, then fine, we can keep them around. But old
versions and old versions of RSS really don't need to be left in for
the future. If we were to remove them as soon as we've moved trunk to
2.whatever/3.0 development, that gives everyone the proper amount of
warning, plugins will popup nearly immediately, and by the time the
new release is out, people will be expecting the loss.

Keeping 4 feed formats around and hopefully adding one more for a
total of five feeds for the next version is just unnecessary
unmaintained bloat. RSS, RDF, and Atom, 3 formats, in their latest
version, is all that we really need.

--
--Robert Deaton
http://somethingunpredictable.com