RE: [syndication] Is a Feed the right place for your Data?

["Danny Ayers" <danny666@virgilio.it>]

>     permalink: http://bitsko.slc.ut.us/blog/feed-data.html
>
>     Working with RSS since extensibility became a good practice, I'm
>     used to hearing things like "I'm going to add this [something]
>     data to my feed and then everyone will [something]." My question
>     is now, "Where was this data before you put it in your feed, and
>     why isn't it still there now?"
>
> A short piece and HowTo on making your microcontent part of the web
> instead of being lost after being scrolled off the bottom of an RSS or
> Atom feed.
>
>   -- Ken

It looks to me like there's an ongoing smudging of what a feed actually is -
having microcontent like dc:description or a short review in an RDF data
file is a good use of the format; when data which is intended to be
persistent drops off the bottom of the page then it's getting silly. Site
summary material is getting mixed up with "what my cat had for breakfast".

If an aggregator is a tool to echo the content of multiple blogs in a single
UI, then data like FOAF or review information doesn't really have a place.
But if the aggregator is the prototype microcontent client, then it's a
different story.

It seems to me as if there's a push from two directions - RDF folks want to
extend the aggregator to be a SemWeb client, and be able to process and
display other (persistent) data; the RSS-simple folks want their format to
carry richer material, but with the aggregator remaining effectively a
passive display. As a result of these forces the common ground of the feed
formats is getting muddy.

My guess is that we need a clearer distinction between what is
time-sensitive and what is persistent data. The feed (in its traditional
form) then just pumps out RecentChanges links, but elsewhere there can files
containing perhaps similarly-formatted, persistent data. The whole lot can
then either be directly link rel'ed to from the site HTML home page (as is
currently done with RSS and FOAF files) or intermediate site summaries can
be used.

> P.S. This message is crossposted, please check your reply-tos
> carefully.

Cheers,
Danny.