Talk:Atom (standard)

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[edit] RDF

User:Toussaint made an edit that said "Unlike RSS and other similar applications are based on the World Wide Web Consortium's RDF standard, Atom is not". If such a statement is to stand, it needs to qualify which versions of RSS it is talking about. -- SamRuby 03:14, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Old Discussion

Merge completed and notice removed. JesseW 22:40, 10 May 2005 (UTC)

It would be good to have more info on what is considered to be improvements in Atom over RSS. —Christiaan 22:04, 20 May 2005 (UTC)

This talk by Tim Bray (at Emerging Technology Conference, feed from IT Conversations) might be useful addition. He discusses motivation, as well as rationale, and his take on the process (e.g. Was it the right one?) http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1155.html

The Sam Ruby link http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/Rss20AndAtom10Compared in external links lists them. Perhaps someone should copy the gist or ask Sam to summarise? --BozMotalk 15:40, 4 January 2006 (UTC)
That would be useful. It mentions that there is a large list of Atom supporters. Can you name some prominent ones. Also an article on Sam Ruby would be useful. --Ben Houston 23:48, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] NPOV problems with this article

1) This article would give a naive user the misleading impression that all properties and benefits of web feeds generally are properties restricted to Atom feeds. Example: "Atom, from a user's perspective, allows Internet users to subscribe to websites that have provided web feeds; these are typically sites that change or add content regularly...A program known as a feed reader or aggregator can check Atom webpages on behalf of a user and display any updated articles that it finds...There are also search engines for content published via Atom feeds like Feedster or Blogdigger..." (said BDevine)

(1) The POV language you are complaining about is actually the same that is used on the RSS article -- I just removed RSS and inserted Atom. I think it is a great idea that we balance the leads of both articles to mention the other format in an equivalent light. (said Bhouston)
I don't think that copying the RSS article and posting it here as an Atom article is a sensible way to create Wikipedia content. My suggestion was that we should distinguish between properties of web feeds in general and those of a specific format (RSS or Atom) in particular. Not long ago, the only web feeds around were various dialects of RSS. There are a lot of oldtimers who talk about RSS and webfeeds as if they were synonyms. I can appreciate that doing so would hurt the feelings of partisans of Atom. betsythedevine 21:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Apples and oranges are both edible, one would expect reference on each of their Wikipedia entries to their use as foodstuff. A naive user might misinterpret this to believe that apples are the only fruit.

2) Such an impression is especially misleading considering that Atom is uncommon outside the blog-universe. CNN, the NY Times, and the BBC (just to mention the top three newslinks on my bookmark bar) have RSS feeds only, and don't mention Atom. (said BDevine)

(2) There are many major content providers that provide Atom feeds including the NYT-owned About.com, and the Google websites Blogger, Google News, Gmail. The popular O'Reilly Network and Wikipedia also support Atom. My contention is that you picked a specific link that does not support Atom in order to make a broad and unfair claim. (said Bhouston)
I picked the top three newssites that came preinstalled in my Safari browser. I looked at them because my memory was, from the days when I worked at Feedster, that the enthusiasm of Sixapart and Bloogle for Atom was never picked up by our mainstream media feeds. I don't dispute your contention that many content providers offer Atom feeds; I think it's misleading to imply that all do. betsythedevine 21:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Atom is common, as anyone that cares to look will discover.


3) This article article uses non-neutral language about Atom's rival format RSS. Example, "the deficiencies in the frozen RSS format." "Atom improvements over RSS 2.0" "the shortcomings of RSS". (said BDevine)

(3) Can you address those points? I'll then build upon your changes. Please remember that I am trying to represent reality here, not the specific consensual reality common within the clique of Dave Winer. BTW here is one of the first calls to develop Echo, which become Atom: [1]. (said Bhouston)
Ben, you have spent several days making changes large and small to articles related to Atom, web feeds, various newsreaders, even my own user page. I have an actual job and a family life and many other activities more rewarding than fighting with you. You need help from a neutral third party here, IMO. Somebody who understands that reality should include at least some research into, and a sympathetic presentation of, the consensual reality of people who are not strong supporters of Atom. betsythedevine 21:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Technical deficiencies can be measured without "consensual reality". Those of RSS are well-documented on the Web, as is their role in motivating the development of Atom.

4) The repeated mantra that RSS is frozen and can't evolve is no longer true, if it ever was. Harvard is updating the specification and soliciting input from the community: [2] (said BDevine)

(4) I will address the frozen for three years and then unfrozen claim and I will include references to people that explain the politics of these shinanigans. (says Bhouston)
People from both sides of the fence, I hope. betsythedevine 21:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
According to the specification: "...the RSS spec is, for all practical purposes, frozen at version 2.0.1".

5) The suggestion that Atom is the standard for podcasting isn't borne out by community practice, e.g. "Blogger only provides a Atom newsfeed, and RSS 2.0 is the standard for podcasting...There is a free service, FeedBurner, that can be used to translate the Blogger Atom feed into a RSS 2.0 feed.." [3] (said BDevine)

(5) iTunes, the permiere pod casting application support Atom podcasts. I think you are again trying to make a POV claim. [4] (says Bhouston)
I don't know much about podcasting, but I had always heard it talked about in terms of RSS. I posted something I thought was relevant from the first page of Google results for "atom + podcasting". BTW, are you aware that the URL you posted is a complaint from a guy that his Atom feed is being rejected by iTunes, despite their claim that they support it? betsythedevine 21:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Atom may be used for podcasting, but RSS 2.0 is probably in more common use for podcasting than Atom.

6) Another example of confusing Atom with web feeds in general: "On Web pages, Atom feeds are typically linked with an orange rectangle, or with the letters XML." (said BDevine)

(6) Again, the POV language you are complaining about is taken from the RSS page with Atom inserted for each mention of RSS. Again, I think it is a great idea to balance both articles such that the other format is mentioned in reference to the little orange box. Although I did just removed the XML orange box from the Atom -- it may be RSS specific. (says Bhouston)
I don't think that copying the RSS article and posting it here as an Atom article is a sensible way to create Wikipedia content. betsythedevine 21:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

The history of RSS and Atom is full of contention. If you consider it of encyclopedic interest, maybe you could create a separate article "Rival web syndication formats", and link to that article from both the RSS and Atom articles. But it's not OK to slant the Atom article (or the RSS article) to reflect only one side's version of the controversy, praising one format while denigrating or minimizing its rivals. betsythedevine 04:08, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Hey Betsy! Great to see you again. Of course, I spent the last three days bring this article up to speed. (Anyways, let's remember that Betsy Devine is a close friend of Dave Winer, a strong headed individual who prefers the RSS standard to Atom. Betsy Devine is such an admirer of Dave Winer]] that she creates images of Socrates with the head of Dave on them. Dave links to her all the time and she links to him. Thus Betsy Devine is really fighting her friend's battle here. She is not a neutral person. Just had to get that disclaimer out of the way.)
Hey, Ben, great to hear these accusations from you once again. I especially enjoy your misleading spin on the joke post I once wrote about somebody else's comparison of Dave to Socrates: [5] Dave and I are friends who read each other's blogs. I encourage anyone who is curious about whether I am, or Ben is, trying to slant Wikipedia to look at the pattern of user contributions by each of us. Ben's. Betsy's. betsythedevine 21:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
I will remove the NPOV dispute tag and we can get around to fixing up the article. Or I suggest that we also add it to the RSS article since it contains much of the same POV text. I also believe that we need a neutral third party here to critique this article -- Betsy Devine is the wrong person to do it. --Ben Houston 13:38, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
The NPOV dispute tag should remain there until the problems with this article are solved. I agree that a neutral third party should help with this. I'll see if I can find one over at Wikipedia third opinion. Feel free to join me and give your own side of this issue. betsythedevine 21:28, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Let's get a third party in here if one has the time. It is of no use for use to throw accusations at each other. I posit that all my edits have been legitimate and that you, as an RSS supporter, are just display a lot of bias wrapped up in high sounding language. Let's see if my edits are reverted on an individual article basis? I created an Atom category to mirror the RSS category and added it to pagese that support Atom -- I confirmed each product before I did so. If not then the people watching those pages most likely feel that they are legitimate -- none have been reverted so far, and only one has been slightly modified to better fit with the section I put it in. The best demonstration of your bias is that you complained about the "bias" in the Atom article but you feel no qualms about the same "bias" in the RSS article -- I did that in part to make a point and you proved it well. Also, I only copied two sections (part of the user's perspective lead) and most of the usage section -- maybe we should pull out the usage section of both the RSS and Atom articles into a separate web feed article to avoid unnecessary duplication? --Ben Houston 21:34, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
Please don't mess up the Atom article in order to make a point about the RSS article--an article which I didn't write or edit. The fact that I made no objection to material there, which I never read, demonstrates .... ? Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks: "There is no excuse for personal attacks on other contributors. Do not make them. It is your responsibility to foster and maintain a positive online community in Wikipedia." I hope a third party can bring neutrality, not pro-RSS bias, to the article. betsythedevine 22:39, 15 February 2006 (UTC)
My apologizes for moving the POV tag to specific sections -- I was trying to narrow the dispute. I don't think I messed up the whole article to make a point -- I strongly dispute your claim that I did. I find is dissappointing that you do not like any of the middle of the road solutions I suggested above in response to your criticism. --Ben Houston 00:09, 16 February 2006 (UTC)
Compare Betsy's adjustments to Dave Winer's page with the facts about Winer's role in the creation of RSS etc. I would suggest her edits reflect considerably more on her friendship with him than research.


I don't see anything wrong with the article as it's written now. It doesn't appear to be too biased in favour or against RSS. However, are there any pro-RSS points to add to the differences between them? Fagstein 02:52, 16 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any problems with the "Atom Compared to RSS 2.0" section. As far as I can see it's a set of factual statements. Can anyone justify the continued presence of the banner above this section? Metamatic 20:50, 21 June 2006 (UTC)
I agree. I was just at both specifications from the standpoint of an engineer with extensive xml background what the article states as technical merits seem accurate. It's interesting also that the neutrality, not the accuracy, of the article is being questioned - a sort of case of, "what your saying isn't wrong, but I require it be said in a way I can accept." That said rss is the vhs of it's space and has those types of advantages: it's adoption is widespread in providers and consumers and the fact that rss has become the everyday term for active content distribution. Maybe those points could be added to the comparison of atom and rss and finally take off the neutrality tag? Loudej 02:27, 01 July 2006 (ET)
As XML applications developer, I think that the Atom Compared to RSS 2.0 section is neutral and accurate. — Anrie Nord 2006-07-01 14:47Z
It's says multiple times, what atom is standartized, it should be only one time and saying that specifically. It don't say what is good in rss, btw., from google: Results 1 - 100 of about 377,000,000 for atom (not really about atom feeds), Results 1 - 100 of about 4,290,000,000 for rss (rough 10 times more and mainly about rss feeds), only that wide spread is advantage. I don't see neutrality and it's clearly misleading, until not answered question: why rss so popular and atom isn't. POV returned. Rikis 09:39, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
The relative popularity/link count of RSS vs. Atom is irrelevant. RSS is about 6 years older, for a start. I believe the facts stated here are all verifiable.
Verifiable, but not neutral. It's looks like Atom is better, then RSS. When why everyone choosing RSS? It's common sense to choose latest software. And as I mentioned earlier: All section is same facts in favour Atom. I willing to agree to title something like A brief description of the main issues of RSS 2.0 addressed by Atom 1.0, if there is no one who wish to write neutral comparission. Rikis 10:27, 29 August 2006 (UTC)
With much hesitation, I tried to add some of the ideas from this discussion to the comparison of RSS and Atom, which previously was just a list of the reasons Atom's supporters don't like RSS. Could we all agree that each format probably has specific benefits for specific user groups? betsythedevine 19:26, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
There are at least two RSSes, Slashdot is an example of a site that quite satisfied with RSS 1.0, and popular usage of the term RSS tends to encompass all three branches. Besty, ideally you would update your changes to reflect this reality. SamRuby 20:34, 6 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not sure how the Slashdot/RSS 1.0 thing fits into a section comparing Atom to RSS 2.0--do you want to add that somewhere? I tried to make it clearer about the popular usage of RSS to mean web feeds in general. betsythedevine 02:25, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Done, and without even mentioning Slashdot. I just didn't want it to be perceived as an edit war. Feel free to adjust my changes as you see fit. SamRuby 02:45, 7 September 2006 (UTC)
Editwars--, SamRuby++ You've improved it, thanks. betsythedevine 03:41, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Atom in other contexts

Both the Atom and RSS articles put both formats in the web syndication field only. It would certainly be good to explain that Atom (at least) aims beyond syndicating news. In fact, some active Atom users have stopped using the Syndication term alltogether. It is for example debated whether or not Atom could "replace" SOAP for conveying web services. SylvainHellegouarch 09:53, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

It is a syndication format. Shoehorning other data into it is utter stupidity. --Dtcdthingy 15:47, 30 May 2006 (UTC)
Nevertheless, Atom allows extension, and Google (for one) has extended it to be a general purpose data API, which underlies their mail and calendar products. Wikipedia articles report facts, regardless of their "utter stupidity". C. Scott Ananian 05:43, 19 June 2006 (UTC)
It seems clear atom is also a "publishing protocol."


The core of Atom is the Atom Format (RFC 4287) and the Atom Publishing Protocol (under development). The Atom Format is already in use well beyond content publishing, CodeZoo's project notification (with DOAP "shoehorned" into it) is a good example.

[edit] testing Wikipedia feed

Not much to see here. & < > <title> <random> <xmp>

[edit] WSSE Authentication

It'd be cool if the article talked about WSSE authentication. Mathiastck 18:49, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, the WSSE currently redirects to WS-Security. XML.com: Atom Authetication KennethJ (talk) 16:29, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

If someone who understood WSSE wanted to add something to the article, that would be welcome. Our current article on WS-Security makes no mention of Atom. Possibly Atom is just a user of that spec. If you know, please comment. EdJohnston (talk) 18:23, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] XML Schema for Atom

Is there an official XML Schema for Atom? I tried to find it on the w3c site but that only redirected me to the IETF site that did not provide an XML Schema. I found may other atom.xsd files but many of them are not correct.

Thanks --Dan 19:07, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Software

It would be nice if this page would link to or supply a list of programs etc. that can be used to read Atom feeds. Shinobu 02:27, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New article: History of web syndication technology

The detailed early history of who invented what web syndication format element when has become a matter of interest and dispute. The same kind of problems cropping up in the article about Podcasting were largely solved when somebody created a separate article for History of podcasting. This seems like a possible solution for web feeds also.

Another possible benefit of the change is to prevent a Wikipedia fork in feed history, so that somebody with a new citation adds to info to one article but doesn't realize that an incorrect version still lurks in a different article.

From RSS, I copied the earliest history over to the new article, then went back to RSS and re-phrased that earliest history as summary.

I'm not sure, however, if people who edit this Atom article would like to see its technical history moved into a different article. On the good side, that would give people interested in technical history one place to look. On the dark side, if there aren't severe credit disputes on early Atom, maybe you feel such a move isn't needed. Or maybe you would like to keep all the history of Atom here, and just put a history summary in the new article? Just for the sake of symmetry, I copied the Atom history over to that page. It shouldn't be left in both places, or it will fork--one page should have the history, the other should just summarize and point to t he long version. Could we discuss on this talk page which course would be best?My intention is good, please don't flame me. betsythedevine 03:18, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I landed on this page looking for information about the Atom Publishing Protocol. In fact, I followed a disambiguation link for "APP" to get here.

Almost all the content of the page concerns Atom syndication. I am not familiar with Wikipedia internals, so I don't know whether this is an error in disambiguation. The topic "Atom (standard)" appears to encompass both syndication and publishing. Would it make sense to separate them?

Thanks

Jsandoe 01:02, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Atom vs. RSS 2.0 section cleanup

I did a cleanup of this section a few days ago, but it was rv'd, and the editor who rv'd has not replied to a message on his talk page, so I decided to tag the section for cleanup. I think that this section suffers from a couple of serious problems:

  1. . It's excessively promotional, copied almost verbatim from lists that have been circulated by Atom supporters to try to convince people to abandon RSS, and it needs to be rewritten with a more balanced and neutral tone rather than a stridently pro-Atom/anti-RSS one. Wikipedia is not the appropriate place for promoting a spec over another one, even if the spec's a good one.
    • if you see promotional verbage, converting those words to a more balanced and neutral tone would be a good thing. Removing data which is relevant is not. SamRuby 01:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
  2. . It goes into too much technical detail, mixing up highly visible differences (such as the fact that Atom clearly marks content type) with ones that will affect very few users (such as the date format, or the use of XML Namespaces). Most readers will rightly ask "who cares?", missing the Atom important differences in the noise.
    • different people value different things. Perhaps attempting to sort this list into two sections might be a good first step, removing data which is relevant is not a good first step. SamRuby 01:42, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

What does everyone else think? You can see my former rewrite in the article history. David 21:57, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

    • Sam: when you write "relevant", I think you have to consider what audience this information might be relevant to. Wikipedia articles can and do go into some technical detail, but this should not be a low-level technical spec sheet. I know that this list already exists elsewhere, so maybe a short summary of the main points with a pointer to an external site would be the best way to handle it. We've gone through this same kind of problem with articles about airports — as a pilot, I initially added all kinds of information to airport articles (radio frequencies, night lighting, instrument approaches, FBO locations, etc.) which seemed very important to me, but wasn't really appropriate to a general encyclopedia audience, and other editors eventually (and rightly) removed it. And note that when I say that the use of XML Namespaces isn't relevant to this audience, I'm saying it as one of the members of the XML WG that developed the Namespaces spec, so this isn't an anti-XML rant. David 03:30, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
      • Forgive me, but if you check the history, this section recently underwent a significant POV challenge. Now you swoop in, and unilaterally "Rewrite blatantly POV section" (your words, not mine). And when you are asked to identify promotional verbage, you change the subject. SamRuby 21:05, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
        • No forgiveness necessary. I decided not to flag the section as POV this time around, but if we did want to talk about POV issues, the list relentlessly picks at RSS 2.0 for both major and trivial issues simply for the sake of accumulation -- is it really a major issue that RSS does not have an XML schema, for example, or is that there just to make the list longer? -- and omits information that might make RSS look not quite as bad. For example, the list claims that RSS 2.0 cannot be modified, but it omits to mention that the RSS 2.0 spec explicitly allows extension through the use of markup using namespaces. The list compares Atom to RSS 2.0 but not to RSS 1.0, which resolves some of the issues (for example, the problem with reusing elements in other documents, and the problem of escaped markup -- in fact, don't some RSS 2.0 feeds incorporate RSS 1.0 elements?). Over all, the impression is of a list designed not to educate people about differences, but to convince people that Atom is better, picking the angle on each point that puts Atom in the most favorable light. That's not to say that Atom isn't better than RSS -- it's good to have a lot of the ambiguities resolved. It's just that the list is a bit out of place in Wikipedia, since it looks a lot like advocacy (I'm not surprised that it was tagged POV before, and should have checked the history -- thanks for pointing that out). David 00:53, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality between Atom and RSS

Our article on Atom (standard) does not really need to take sides between the two protocols. Here is some existing language that I think might be toned down:

The development of Atom was motivated by the existence of many incompatible versions of the RSS syndication format, all of which had shortcomings, and the poor interoperability of XML-RPC-based publishing protocols.[1]

How about replacing it with this version:

Ben Trott was one of the advocates of the new format that became Atom. He took note of the incompatibility between some versions of the RSS syndication format, and also believed that XML-RPC-based publishing protocols were not sufficiently interoperable.[1]

This attributes the opinion to its owner (Ben Trott) and doesn't make us collect data and references to prove that the dialects of RSS were incompatible, which surely would be time-consuming. Let me know if anyone objects to this change. EdJohnston (talk) 02:43, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Regarding the first part of that statement, that's like saying: "It's really annoying that Blue-ray and HD DVD are incompatible. I know! Let's create a third DVD format, SuperDVD, that's incompatible with both of them!" Was Ben Trott really making that argument? Because it sounds kind of insane. I read the referenced article, "Why We Need Echo", but didn't see any mention of RSS dialects or incompatibilities. j4_james (talk) 21:08, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Barriers to adoption

  • RSS 2.0 support for enclosures [...]

Atom also supports enclosures.

Wooptoo (talk) 01:10, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

This section is trying to explain why Atom didn't take over the world and why RSS still survives. The points are a bit speculative and sourcing could be better. Perhaps someone will get around to improving the section :-). EdJohnston (talk) 03:34, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] See Also sections can be overdone

With this edit, an editor removed several items from See Also that were also mentioned in the text. I've seen debates like this before, and I now support the removal of such duplication. Wikipedia is not a directory. The place where it is most useful to draw attention to other relevant articles is in the text, where their connection to the topic can be explained. EdJohnston (talk) 17:56, 28 April 2008 (UTC)