The Silent Penguin

Last time Dave asked a similar question, my comments were deleted and ultimately I was banned. Mark Pilgrim suffered a similar fate. For posterity, here are the comments Mark and I would make:

http://blog.ziffdavis.com/gillmor/archive/2004/05/31/1167.aspx#1186
http://diveintomark.org/public/2004/06/incompatible-clarification.html

Sam,

I'm not sure if you read the post that penguin is pointging to. The revision that penguin points to was made specifically to address the comments that Mark Pilgrim and you had made about the original proposal. If you read it carefully, it does not change anything about compatibility; it is simply a clarification.

Personally, I think the original comments about compatibility were bogus (if anything was "broken", it was broken before RSS 2.0 came along and had nothing to do with the clarification), and I think it's a shame that RSS board bowed to pressure and weakened the recommendation. But it's even sillier to claim that they *didn't* respond, when they clearly weakened the proposal in deference to you.

Thanks Josh.

To Sam -- it's pretty amazing to think that Mark suffered -- you should see the flames that guy posted in that period. He's an abusive person, unbelivably wanton in his accusations. He creates a lot more suffering than he gets, and you got a lot of nerve complaining, because we were responding to your "silent data loss" firedrill.

Regardless, you're free to post whatever you like. This time, as an experiment, we're allowing abusive and off-topic comments, so enjoy yourself.

Dave

Joshua: I didn't say that they didn't respond. I said that my comments were deleted.

Unfortunately, this "clarification" clarifies nothing actionable from a feedvalidator perspective. The spec continues to point to howtos which provide conflicting advice. Even if such howtos were disregarded, the question still remains as to whether descriptions which were valid UserLand RSS 0.91 are still to be considered valid RSS 2.0.

Until I see a clarification in the spec that says otherwise, I plan to continue to assume that plain text is equally as valid as escaped HTML in both titles and descriptions.

Sam,

Perhaps I misunderstood, but the clear implication of the title "thawing", and your response that "I raised the same issues" seemed to be misrepresenting the referenced post. Any issues you/Mark raised about thawing were NOT about the referenced post, and the referenced post WAS in fact responsive to your earlier concerns.

You may disagree with the response that you guys got, and you may be dissatisfied. And I'm happy to change the subject now. But I do feel that the title of this blog entry, and your subsequent response, were unfairly misrepresenting the actual content of the post.

Joshua, when you attempt to quote me, please do me a favor and actually capture the words I used. What I said was "Last time Dave asked a similar question, my comments were deleted and ultimately I was banned. For posterity, here are the comments Mark and I would make:

http://blog.ziffdavis.com/gillmor/archive/2004/05/31/1167.aspx#1186
http://diveintomark.org/public/2004/06/incompatible-clarification.html".

Sam, go make Atom a great format and quit bitching about RSS. I was trying to put my finger on what's so unpleasant about the way you poke your nose into everything. Then I figured it out. Remember Worf on Star Trek the Next Generation. He's known to say "You have gall." And then "But I admire gall." I agree with Worf, gall is cool. But I don't think Worf would like you Sam, because you have no honor. He would say "You have no honor." And he wouldn't even bother to kill you. He would say you don't deserve an honorable death.