That actually makes sense
Clay Shirky explains why Echo…the new blog syndication format under development.
And the Great and the Good of the weblog syndication world are doing this work...in a wiki. There are lots of good reasons for using a wiki, of course, instead of a trackbacked weblog conversation. Though both weblogs and wikis support conversational patterns, weblogs are "conversation as published comments" while wikis are "conversation as shared editing." Weblogs tend towards polarized or divergent views, while wikis tend towards convergent ones, which is just what you want for a conversation around standards.
But there is a second reason, under the surface but possibly more important -- wikis denature personality. Echo exists not because there are things wrong with the RSS markup -- there are, but they could be easily fixed. Echo exists because there are things wrong with the RSS process. RSS is having not a technological crisis but a constitutional one, where who decides what concerning RSS is not clear, and will never be clear, because the people doing the deciding don't even see themselves as being part of a decision making body.
Ruby is attempting to cut that Gordian knot by launching the new standards work in a wiki. When the problem with the process is social, the solution should be social too:
That last line is critical. As I said the other day, the RSS and RDF camps just don't get along, and it's stupid and unnecessary. Technology is too often treated like religion. And to be clear, everything I've read shows Dave Winer trying like hell to get along (while trying like hell to get everyone to use RSS 2). This is competitiveness at its worst, because both formats are useful and used. And to whine about little flaws in one or the other spec is stupid. If we treated RFCs the was RSS and RDF have been treated, we wouldn't even HAVE a web. And if we treated RSS and RDF the way we treat RFCs, it would all be smoov like butta.
As a side note, in the comments to Mr. Shirkey's explanation, Richard MacManus says:
This is something that makes me a little queezy about weblogs. If I had my way, I'd rank the importance of topics as number 1. I would like my RSS Aggregator to deliver RSS feeds to me based on topics that I subscribe to, rather than by author...
continued on my weblogMaybe it's me, but I found it rather humorous that he would refer you to his weblog to read about what makes him queezy over weblogs. I've never used a wiki. I've looked at one or two and they seemed… messy to me. But from what I've read about the de-emphasis on authorship a wiki entails, I can understand the part of Mr. MacManus's comment that didn't make me chuckle.
I think I'll be checking out the wiki for this endeavor.
posted by Prometheus 6 at 7/2/2003 10:50:41 AM |
Posted by P6 at July 2, 2003 10:50 AM
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