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,
Nice work. Tim really hits the nail on the head with all of that too.
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.
If I get one whiff that anyone is seriously considering calling this new format "RSS" or any variant of "RSS", I will immediately withdraw my support.
"""
Subsequent work should happen in modules, using namespaces, and in completely new syndication formats, with new names.
"""
(source: http://backend.userland.com/rss#roadmap )
We've tried the first (and gotten flamed and beaten up). This is the second.
Great roadmap. Forward, forward...
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.
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, the roadmap says preliminary at the moment, and I believe that to be accurate. Please feel free to propose and advocate alternatives.
The pace does seem dizzying at the moment. I would like to see the result be something that we would feel comfortable living with for quite some time.
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, 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.