I’ve disagreed with members of the Indieweb community on many things….usually respectfully. I don’t understand Dave Winer’s venom on this matter. I very much respect what he’s done, and still use RSS regularly. But I really don’t like how he seems to be clinging to RSS. It seems to be, if you criticize RSS and think there is a different way, you are no friend of his.
In every community, there are hardliners. And certainly, many Indieweb people are very definitive in their views. But most recognize that you cannot just only support new standards and not have at least some support for older ones. You have to transition between the two.
In identifying the Feeds page of the Indieweb wiki as indicative of a philosophy, he is missing the point. The page identifies several trends. XML has been supplanted in many areas by other delivery methods…JSON, for example. Leaving aside HTML as a form of XML, the criticisms of traditional feeds are all legitimate ones.
So, in the end, the idea of embedding your feed markup inside your web page has some very real advantages. It means enhancing your site, rather than generating another copy of it in a different format. I appreciate that.
I also agree with Mr. Winer, if we “can get uptake for the formats they would like to replace RSS with, then everyone will support them. Until then, we use what works — for us.” Who is stopping you, sir?
If you think that you cannot adopt part of a group’s philosophy without having to buy into it all, then you would be wrong. We’re not working against you. We just disagree with you on one point. Let’s just agree to disagree and focus on moving forward the points we do agree on.
RSS is his baby. We just need to smile politely and move on.