Proposal: Revise the RSS 2.0 Specification

In the 2.5 years I've been a member of the RSS Advisory Board, three questions have been asked most often by programmers having difficulty interpreting the RSS 2.0 specification:

1. Can an item contain more than one enclosure?
2. What elements are allowed to contain HTML?
3. How do I deal with relative URLs?

I think it's time that the board answered them.

In February, work began on a new, written-from-scratch draft of the specification, with each revision announced and vetted on the RSS-Public mailing list. The main contributors to the draft are four members of the board and one of the lead developers of the Feed Validator: James Holderness, Randy Charles Morin, Sam Ruby, Greg Smith and myself.

The new draft documents the same elements and attributes described in RSS 2.0 (version 2.0.8), the current spec, making no changes to the requirements upon which RSS creators Dan Libby and Dave Winer sparked the incredibly successful RSS boom. No elements have been added or removed.

It does clarify the RSS specification in the three areas mentioned above, based on our interpretation of the current spec and its predecessors:

1. An item cannot contain more than one enclosure. The only RSS element that can be present more than once in an item is category.
2. The only RSS element that can contain HTML is an item's description.
3. Relative URLs are not allowed. When they're encountered in an item's description -- which is not recommended -- the feed's link element should be used as the base URL.

Though we could answer these three questions by editing the current spec, this draft should be easier to interpret because it follows the rules of RFC 2119, a standard for spec writers that dictates exactly what words like "must", "may" and "should" mean when they appear in a technical document.

It also has been through a thorough and open review process that included 11 revisions to the draft and 13 revisions to a companion document still under development, the RSS Profile.

I proposed today that the RSS Advisory Board adopt the draft as version 2.0.9 of the RSS 2.0 specification.

If this proposal is seconded, the seven-day discussion period will be used to fix mistakes, address concerns and make other minor edits to this draft. When the vote begins, I'll report to the board on the changes that were made and publish the final draft at the above URL for consideration.

Comments from the public are encouraged on the RSS-Public mailing list.

Rss · 2006/10/04 · 1 COMMENT · Link

James Holderness and Paul Querna Join RSS Advisory Board

James Holderness and Paul Querna have joined the RSS Advisory Board.

Holderness is a software developer working on the Snarfer RSS reader for Windows whose past projects include the WebFerret search utility and Delrina CyberJack Internet application suite.

He's also an active participant on the board's RSS-Public mailing list who contributed to the RSS Profile, a set of best practice recommendations for RSS in ongoing development.

Querna is a software engineer at Ask working on Bloglines, one of the most popular web-based RSS readers.

He's also a member of the project management committee for the Apache web server and formerly a developer of voice over IP communications systems at BitStruct.

Welcome to the board!

Rss · 2006/10/03 · 2 COMMENTS · Link

Foley's Abuse of Teens Should Draw Bipartisan Disgust

I'm glad that some right-wing partisans such as Michelle Malkin are outraged about Mark Foley's sexual exploitation of Congressional pages and the inaction of House GOP leaders who knew he was behaving suspiciously and did nothing to investigate:

There is a time and place for attacking the Dems and the MSM. Now is not that time. Parents need assurance that their kids are safe on Capitol Hill. If Beltway GOP elites can't understand this, they are beyond hope.

The Wall Street Journal editorial page, on the other hand, claims that Republican leaders didn't stop Foley because they were too tolerant of gays:

... in today's politically correct culture, it's easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert's head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys. Are these Democratic critics of Mr. Hastert saying that they now have more sympathy for the Boy Scouts' decision to ban gay scoutmasters?

It's hard to believe that a newspaper with such a great news department allows itself to be associated with such vile sentiments. The Journal has to be the only major paper in America that would use Foley's abuse -- which has yet to be criminally investigated and might include more than online chat -- to make the implication that gays are predisposed to prey on children. Has there ever been a heterosexual politician in a sex scandal whose actions were viewed as a statement against all heterosexuals?

The Journal devoted thousands of words to President Clinton sexing up Monica Lewinsky, who was a college-age White House intern when their relationship began. Did it ever use that as a springboard to leap to conclusions about straight men and young girls?

There are times in politics when decency compels you to throw a member of your own side under the bus. This is one of those times. Anyone in Congress who protected Foley should resign from his leadership position and perhaps even his seat.

The instant message conversations Foley had with teens -- one interrupted by a boy's mother, prompting Foley's hope that she "didn't see any thing" -- may be the most disgusting conduct by a member of Congress since Ted Kennedy left Mary Jo Kopechne in the water in 1969.

The worst thing about this scandal is that it's the second time our politicians have been caught using the page program as a jailbait dating service. Members of Congress should register with the local sheriff's department when they move and be prohibited from living within 500 yards of a school or day care center.

Politics · Florida · 2006/10/03 · 15 COMMENTS · Link

Want Out of Wikipedia? Fight to Stay In

If you dive into the Wikipedia talk page on Seth Finkelstein, you'll find his interesting and utterly futile effort to be deleted from the encyclopedia. Getting a piece in The Guardian isn't helping his claim to be insufficiently famous at all.

On the mailing list WikiEN-L, Steve Summit identifies a law of Wikipedia that should become known as the Finkelstein Paradox -- a subject who argues he doesn't belong in Wikipedia is more likely to remain in Wikipedia:

I was struck by Seth's account of how he "strongly argued the case against myself" at AFD. I suspect that a biographical article's subject tends to carry significant but paradoxical undue weight at AFD, in two contradictory directions. Subjects who argue that they are notable and that their articles should be kept are obviously vain self-promoters, so their articles should obviously be deleted. But subjects who argue that their articles should be deleted are obviously trying to hide something (or, at least, to unjustly influence the free flow of information), so their articles should obviously be kept.

It's too late for Finkelstein, but others can learn from his predicament. If you're added to Wikipedia and don't want to be there, show up for the ArticlesForDeletion (AFD) debate and argue the merits of your fame as passionately as your mother would. Edit your own entry and add a few accomplishments and personal qualities that other editors wrongly overlooked. Deride your critics in as supercilious a tone as you can muster.

The Wikipedia editors who show up for deletion votes will respond to these acts like a shark that smells blood in the water.

Wikipedia · 2006/10/01 · 7 COMMENTS · Link

A tragic story in today's Houston Chronicle has an unfortunate ad juxtoposition:

The ad's animated, showing an SUV stopping safely and avoiding a child's ball bouncing into the road. "You always stop," it begins. "You always drive safely. You deserve a reward."

Journalism · 2006/09/30 · 4 COMMENTS · Link

Wikipedia Leader: I Want to Be Deleted

In a provocative commentary for The Guardian, Seth Finkelstein argues that having a biography in Wikipedia is a magnet for libel:

For people who are not very prominent, Wikipedia biographies can be an "attractive nuisance". It says, to every troll, vandal, and score-settler: "Here's an article about a person where you can, with no accountability whatsoever, write any libel, defamation, or smear. It won't be a marginal comment with the social status of an inconsequential rant, but rather will be made prominent about the person, and reputation-laundered with the institutional status of an encyclopedia."

As someone who contributed several biographies to the encyclopedia, I've held to the belief that as a person's entry becomes more well-read, it will attract conscientious editors at a greater rate than harmful ones. I still have all of the entries I've created on my watch list, and none has experienced the kind of abuse Finkelstein describes.

Like me, Finkelstein hovers close to being too obscure for Wikipedia. His biography only had been edited 53 times in two years before this Guardian piece ran.

When an entry's not well-read, the potential for abuse is greater because an edit by someone with an axe to grind is less likely to be reviewed by others.

The press should follow up on something Finkelstein reveals in his commentary -- Angela Beesley, the Wikipedia Board of Trustees member who recently quit, has been fighting to have her own biography deleted:

I'm sick of this article being trolled. It's full of lies and nonsense. My justification for making a third nomination is that my circumstances have changed significantly since the last AfDs -- I have resigned from the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation. Given that this was previously kept on the grounds I was on that Board, there is no longer any reason for this page to be kept. This has already been deleted on the French and German Wikipedias.

Beesley's clearly too well-known to justify deletion from Wikipedia, considering her position as one of the site's leaders for three years. But as Finkelstein notes, this is a huge no-confidence vote in the Wikipedia concept. If she can't get fair treatment on Wikipedia, and founder Jimbo Wales has resorted to protectively editing his own bio on numerous occasions, what confidence should other living subjects have in their own treatment?

Wikipedia · Journalism · 2006/09/29 · 9 COMMENTS · Link

USPTO Rejected 'Podcast' Trademark Registration

I submitted a proposal today urging the RSS Advisory Board to support the common usage of "podcast" and "podcasting" as generic terms that cannot serve as trademarks for Apple Computer or any other entity.

Since its coinage in 2004, the word "podcast" has referred to all audio files delivered as RSS enclosures. This usage became so popular that "podcasting" was declared the 2005 word of the year by the editors of the New Oxford American Dictionary, who gave it the following definition:

A digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the Internet for downloading to a personal audio player.

I found something in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Database that bolsters my claim: On Aug. 29, a USPTO trademark examiner rejected an attempt to register "podcast" as a trademark.

Paul Fowlie of Common Mode Inc. attempted to trademark "podcast" on March 8 for the following class of goods and services:

SOUND RECORDING FEATURING AUDIO INFORMATION FOR DOWNLOAD-SPOKEN WORD AND MUSIC

To see the registration, search the trademark database for the registration with serial number 78831795. On the registration page, click the "TDR" link to see USPTO trademark attorney Monique C. Miller's refusal of the registration.

Miller writes that "podcast" is "merely descriptive," meaning that it describes an entire class of goods and thus cannot function as a trademark:

The term PODCAST may be defined as:

"A free, downloadable audio file that can be listened to on your computer -- where you can burn it to a compact disc -- or on an MP3 player or iPod to enjoy on planes, trains and automobiles. Podcasts were originally thought of as amateurish audio versions of blogs, but no longer; ESPN, NPR, the BBC, Newsweek, news commentators and other highly respected people have podcasts readily available." (See attached definition from www.netlingo.com)

Or

"An audio programme in a compressed digital format, delivered via an RSS feed over the Internet to a subscriber and designed for playback on computers or portable digital audio players, such as the iPod." (See attached definition from http://en.wiktionary.org)

The mark immediately describes and names the characteristics and features of the goods. Accordingly, the mark is refused registration on the Principal Register under Section 2(e)(1) of Trademark Act.

Additionally, the examining attorney submits that the term PODCAST may be unregistrable because it is generic or informational for applicant's services. Generic terms are terms that the relevant purchasing public understands primarily as the common or class name for the goods or services. In re Dial-A-Mattress Operating Corp., 240 F.3d 1341, 57 USPQ2d 1807 (Fed. Cir. 2001); In re American Fertility Society, 188 F.3d 1341, 51 USPQ2d 1832 (Fed. Cir. 1999); In re Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith, Inc., 828 F.2d 1567, 4 USPQ2d 1141 (Fed. Cir. 1987); H. Marvin Ginn Corp. v. Int'l Ass'n of Fire Chiefs, Inc., 782 F.2d 987, 228 USPQ 528 (Fed. Cir. 1986). Generic terms are by definition incapable of indicating a particular source of the goods or services, and cannot be registered as trademarks; doing so "would grant the owner of the mark a monopoly, since a competitor could not describe his goods as what they are." In re Merrill Lynch, 828 F.2d at 1569, 4 USPQ2d at 1142. Applicant's mark is so common in the field that it appears to be unregistrable. (See attached evidence from a search of the Internet). The attached sample of the Internet evidence submitted is evidence of the public's perception of the term.

As evidence, Miller attached the Wiktionary and NetLingo definitions of podcast, a Google search for podcast and audio and recording and trademark registration attempts for "Emergency Podcast System," "Cherry-Picked Podcasts That Don't Suck," "What I Want Podcasting," "Podcast Realty," "VarBusiness Podcast" and "EPodcast."

Rss · Podcasting · 2006/09/27 · 6 COMMENTS · Link

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