Feeds

There are 76 posts filed in Feeds (this is page 5 of 8).

I finished reading this Wired article on RSS revival via a Hacker News post. The two interesting things to me were the subscriber base of Feedly (13 million) and The Old Reader (1 million) – sounds like there is a market there. The other thing is that this story was written in MARCH 2018! And it’s getting this much traction on Hacker News? 50 comments? Give me a break – this is ridiculous! To me, this shows that RSS is a hot topic among Hacker News readers.

rssCloud, WordPress, FeedLand, and Dave Winer

This is an attempt to capture some work/events I have been involved with over the last few weeks regarding the rssCloud protocol. I hope this will provide some insights into software development and technical communication, and will be of use to others using the rssCloud protocol. I hope it will also demonstrate that it can be difficult to identify/isolate problems between multiple apps/web services/web sites, and that all involved in the discussion should adopt a mindset of “follow the data” and be open to input from others.

rssCloud is a notification protocol that uses a “cloud” element in a RSS feed. This element contains information on a cloud server that is supporting this feed. A feed reader app can read the RSS feed and register with the server listed in the cloud element to be notified when the feed updates. The producer of the RSS feed can then “ping” the server to let it know that updates are available, and the server can inform apps that registered that feed that updates are available. The cloud element was included in version 2.0 of the RSS specification.

The protocol has been supported in the blogging tools that Dave Winer developed since 2001 (Radio Userland (feed reader/blogging) and Manila (blogging)). Since that time, several other tools added support for adding the cloud element to RSS feeds (Django, Perl XML-RSS, and syndic-rss2). In 2009, Matt Mullenweg announced that WordPress.com blogs would support rssCloud, and that a plugin would be available for WordPress.org blogs. A unique feature of the WordPress implementation is that the WordPress blog itself is the cloud server. A result of this was that a user did not have to find a rssCloud server for their feed to reference – their own site could handle feed registrations and notifications to feed reader apps. This created a supply of literally millions of weblogs that could support quick notifications to their readers if their reading app supported the use of rssCloud. However, for the most part, only feed readers and apps developed by Dave Winer supported the protocol (River2 (OPML Editor app), River4 and River5 (Node.js apps), Radio3 (Node.js) and now FeedLand (Node.js)).

Some users noted issues with rssCloud support back in 2009 as WordPress.com rolled out its rssCloud support. One of the posts from this period highlighted the problems with registering an application with the rssCloud server associated with the WordPress.com blog. I began looking at rssCloud in 2015 and 2016 with limited success, and tried to develop a separate plugin, but had issues. I have been aware for several years that there were problems with River5 working with WordPress.com blogs and WordPress.org blogs in terms of rssCloud support, but I did not have the Node.js knowledge to adequately figure out the issue.

After the rollout of FeedLand (Dave Winer’s latest feed application), a user, Colin Walker, started asking questions about rssCloud so that he could support it in his custom blog/reader application, and Dave Winer said he wanted people to ask questions about rssCloud, so I thought this was the right time to bring up the WordPress.com problem and document it to the best of my ability. I also tried to not say that it was a FeedLand problem, but to me the end result was that FeedLand was not doing what WordPress.com wanted to support rssCloud. Since Joseph Scott indicated that the WordPress.com implementation would not be changing, it was FeedLand that had to change (and other rssCloud apps that might want to say that they work with WordPress.com blogs). I didn’t get much, if any, credit for bringing this up, but I did identify the problem and tried to provide the level of info that Dave Winer seems to want/need before looking into a problem. During the investigation, Andrew Shell determined that the WordPress cloud server would only respond to requests from ports 80, 443, and 8080. This fact alone would be a valid explanation of why River5 (which ran on a default port of 1337) would not be able to register with a WordPress site or get notifications. However, this was not documented in any of the WordPress posts listed above regarding rollout of RSS Cloud support.

Dave Winer then published a reference app for testing rssCloud implementations (https://github.com/scripting/reallysimple/tree/main/demos/clouddemo). I tried to comment on the reallySimple repo, but I saw this:

Screen capture from Github repo issue

…so I posted my report on my own blog.

I checked, and saw that Github does have moderation features which allow repo owners to block people. I assume this is what has happened. I am also going to assume that this is from my comment on the earlier Github thread where I called out Dave’s negative request for help with rssCloud issues. Being his repo, he can do what he wants. However, to me that does not give the impression that Dave is open to feedback, even though he asked for feedback at the top of the issue (I guess it was just my feedback he did not want). I later checked and saw that I saw the same response on other repos within github.com/scripting, so I assume I am blocked from all of those repos.

This is not the first time I have identified problems in how Dave Winer approaches comments about him or his products. I know he has “guidelines” to handle feedback, and that is his right. At this time in my life (I turned 60 earlier this year, I know Dave is 67-68), I tend more to “call it like I see it” in as factual a manner as I can. If that is what Dave Winer thinks of as “trolls, spammers, and abusers“, I can’t do anything about that. However, I don’t think I fit into any of those categories.

With the help of Andrew Shell, Dave Winer was able to update FeedLand so that it supports display of WordPress.com and WordPress.org blog posts in near-real-time. I am seeing some RSS feed caching issues with WordPress, which I am continuing to document on a Github gist thread. Joseph Scott of Automattic has been very helpful with ideas. I was able to demonstrate that the new version of the rssCloud plugin (0.5.0) supported registration and notification with FeedLand, but subsequent tests with test scripts are showing the RSS feed caching problem I saw last week.

I have a rssCloud project in mind that I would like to develop, but I want all WordPress users to be able to take advantage of rssCloud. Hopefully, this will become a reality soon.

I was able to confirm this morning that rssCloud support in FeedLand worked for my WordPress.com test site – hurray! Many thanks to Andrew Shell and Dave Winer for working things out, along with support from Joseph Scott at Automattic. Joseph Scott released a new version of the RSS Cloud plugin today for WordPress.org sites, I did an initial test, but FeedLand did not get a rssCloud update from my test site. I got some debug ideas from Joseph Scott, working on those now.

Update: I figured out that Gary Teter’s post I referenced on December 10 was not deleted from the FeedLand user view, so looks like it was my post that brought in the comment guidelines. I apologize for the error.

An unfortunate exercise of editorial discretion by Dave Winer?

Update: I figured out that Gary Teter’s post I referenced on December 10 was not deleted from the FeedLand user view, so looks like it was my post that brought in the comment guidelines. I apologize for the error.

I have been following the development of FeedLand, a new feed reader application from Dave Winer. I have used many of the tools that Dave has developed over the years. One cost of using his tools is figuring out how to navigate a web of sometimes unclear expectations on support forums/repos. For the Drummer application, it was made clear that problems related to Drummer were acceptable, but that was about all that was allowed.

Recently, Dave Winer added two new features to FeedLand – a way for a user to make short posts and create a RSS feed, and a collected view/river of user posts. I took a look at the feature yesterday, and decided to make a short post comparing this experience in FeedLand to an app I use for reading posts by Drummer users who blog using the Old School blogging tool. Here is the text of the post:

In response to Ken Smith’s comment on the Read user feeds feature in FeedLand, this is the sense of community that the Old School Drummers river has as well. However, with the ability to post new items as you read them, thee feedback loop tightens…which is a good thing…which is like Twitter/Mastodon…hmmmm…

Post on FeedLand feed

A little later, I decided to check to see if anyone had responded. What I found was my post in the user post view was deleted (the post was still present in my RSS feed), and this post was now at the top of the view:

I should’ve done this from the start, but I didn’t want to start off on a negative note. I’ve been hosting discussion groups on the net since the beginning and these days spam and abuse start pretty soon, and there’s no negotiating with it, you need clear rules and no tolerance.

So you have to have a policy ready, and I do — they’re called the Comment Guidelines, and they apply here. They’re easy to follow for most people, and we need them to protect against spam and abuse.

I’ll include a customized version in the Docs menu, soon. 😉

Wow (I thought to myself)! What was wrong with this? I decided to sleep on it and approach it fresh in the morning. I read through the “Comment Guidelines”, I think my item fell in the “No Spam” category (It’s not a place for you to promote your products, services, blog, initiatives, political causes. Don’t post spam. ) and the “No blog posts” category (2 sentences could be a blog post, I guess). Later this morning, I saw a post by Gary Teter that it appeared he had also fallen prey to deletion:

Apparently FeedLand’s “my feed” isn’t actually my feed, and is intended just for making comments about FeedLand. So I guess I will have to come up with some other way to make quick posts to the blog part from my phone. Disappointed.

As a proud union member who does not cross picket lines, turning off the New York Times feeds at the root level of FeedLand feels like the Musk approach. Unsubscribing from them on your own feed seems better to me. If there’s a social aspect to using FeedLand, it is users following each other’s curation judgments. Not the owner of the platform using the platform itself to express personal judgments.

It appears that the second paragraph of this quote was the offending post.

So – where was the guidance of what to post and what not to post? I looked at the FeedLand Change Notes blog, and found the post on creating a user RSS feed and the first post on the User Feed View feature. There was where I found the key phrase:

The rules of decorum apply here. There will be ways to block people, that’s inevitable. Feel free to discuss the product. Do not get personal, do not give anyone orders. Remember we’re here to have fun and make something new!

from FeedLand Change notes blog

So – read between the lines – this “user feed view” is a Dave Winer site, and is governed by the comment guidelines for his regular blog. I think Gary Teter said it best:

Apparently FeedLand’s “my feed” isn’t actually my feed, and is intended just for making comments about FeedLand. …Disappointed.

Demo of rssCloud protocol and reallySimple NPM module 

In this era of moving away from Twitter, I have been reviewing the rssCloud protocol and think about its potential. I had not done anything about it, but saw this Twitter thread and really liked this comment by Preslav Rachev regarding building on RSS: “And best of all, everyone is free to build their own apps and tooling on top of it without restrictions, or stepping onto each other’s toes.”. I then decided to start playing around….

I read through the walkthrough document on the rssCloud site and decided that the simplest test would be to create some RSS feeds that have rssCloud elements, register them with a rssCloud server, then get the server to contact a server when the feeds updated, then display some information from the feeds. I started with this script from Dave Winer, updated it to provide web output, then ran the script twice to register two different feeds. I then made a video of running the script, posting to feeds using Drummer and FeedLand, then displaying the title or description of the most recent item in the feed, along with the feed name. The video is shown below. Source code and more instructions are available on Github. Let me know what you think!

What about the IndieWeb and RSS?

Dave Winer wrote a post with the title “IndieWeb should love RSS” recently, with one of the themes being that the IndieWeb has a lack of support for RSS. I would like to provide a little background from my participation in the IndieWeb community.

In January 2014, I attended a Homebrew Website Club meeting. This was (and still is) a gathering of like-minded people to discuss personal websites and making updates to them. The lead person was Aaron Parecki, one of the IndieWebCamp co-founders. We all introduced ourselves, and shared various opinions on web site development and talked about our individual sites. One of the things mentioned was the use of microformats as a technique/technology for building websites. I had not heard of this before, and looked into it more after the meeting. I then wrote a post on what I was interested in exploring, and one of the items was “following other sites”. What I found in looking at other Indieweb-type sites was that they did not have any RSS feed for posts. Specifically, the two co-founders, Aaron Parecki and Tantek Celik, did not have feeds available for their sites. In the next meeting I attended, I brought this up. The response was that they were using microformats to encode data within their websites, and that there were microformat parsers which could read that formatted data and present it in a feed reader application. Aaron Parecki even did a hack on the Selfoss feed reader application to allow it to parse microformats-based sites and present site updates like a RSS feed reader would. I even wrote up some instructions on how to set this up (after the fact). In the meeting, however, I asked how the attendees expected people to keep up with site updates without some type of feed to monitor. Aaron’s response was that more people needed to adopt microformats. I said that this was a “boil the ocean” strategy and that people who use feeds to monitor sites expect to use RSS and Atom, not microformats.

Sometime after that, I noticed that both Aaron Parecki and Tantek Celik started providing a feed for their sites, although it was really a feed generated by some other application that was parsing their microformats stuff. For the next several years, though, the general trend in the group of websites that considered themselves to be part of the IndieWeb community focused on microformats and technologies that built on microformats as a building block. Over time, this overt position against RSS/Atom feeds has subsided, and (per the IndieWeb website), I would say the current focus is on the principles of (1) principles over project-centric focus, (2) publish on your site, and (3) design and UX come first, then protocols and formats are developed second. In that list, RSS and Atom become part of a “plurality of projects“, acknowledging that there can be “more than one way to do it”, as Perl devotees like to say.

The more active IndieWeb members (Aaron Parecki and Tantek Celik leading the way) have created a number of standards based on technologies grown from implementations on Indieweb websites (Webmention, Microsub, and Micropub). Time will tell if these develop into more mainstream technologies. I think Webmention (supporting site-to-site communication/commenting) is the furthest along (I have it enabled through WordPress plugin on my main site), but I am interested in exploring the others. RSS, though, has stood the test of time, and is still powering feed readers and podcast clients throughout the world. Dave Winer should rightly feel proud of his contributions in this area. RSS and podcasting are a crucial part of what I call (and others have called) the “independent web” (websites and web presences that are not part of a silo like Twitter, Facebook, etc, where people own their data and control it (also an IndieWeb principle)). The two areas (IndieWeb and independent web) share some features, but in my opinion, should not be considered “the same” – there are differences. My hope is that they can coexist and at times even work together, but always with respect (as the IndieWeb code of conduct states: “Be respectful of other people, respectfully ask people to stop if you are bothered….”).