It's even worse than it appears.
Sunday September 15, 2019; 11:30 AM EDT
  • Yesterday I posted an item here and on Twitter suggesting a collection of RSS feeds from news orgs managed by one or more universities. There were a few responses from people who believe they at least have a good start on this, so let me flesh out the idea a bit. #
    • Think of it as a process more than a product. A list frozen in time isn't very useful. We have lots of those. The idea here is that the list is maintained, it grows and shrinks as new feeds are created, new organizations get on board, and of course some fall off. #
    • I think the people should come from a university or a group of universities. It could be a student project. Lots of people flow through the project over time, and go out into the world and help build awareness of the project. #
    • Having a list that no one knows about is pointless. There should be marketing activity for the project, a Twitter feed, Facebook group, what else? #
    • All popular feed formats are supported. #
    • Feeds should be added conservatively. The quality of the feeds is very important. The list should be culled of dupilicates, different URLs for the same resource. Don't worry about including two feeds that include similar stories (for example, there is a sports feed for the NYT and also a New York news feed, stories about the Knicks would appear in both, this is not a problem, ).#
    • Use the standard OPML subscription list format as documented. Add attributes to any item with the metadata you have for it. #
    • Open source all the way. MIT License for any software, and Creative Commons for the list itself. Create a GItHub repository to store the list and any associated documentation. It can be distributed in other ways of course, via a website, an internet-accessible database. #
  • Please post your comments here. #

© 1994-2019 Dave Winer.

Last update: Sunday September 15, 2019; 3:49 PM EDT.