I think it's kind of interesting to have the top page of a site be a feed. I don't hide the XML-ness of it. I never supported the obfuscation, it's confusing, makes people not trust RSS, imho. #
I think the feed is pretty stable now, so if you want to subscribe, go ahead. I haven't redirected from the old feed yet, probably should do that soon, since it more or less has stopped updating. #
This is all managed in WordLand and therefore is part of the WordPress ecosystem. #
I felt it was time to do a definitive linkblog, since as far as I could tell no one has tried to explain what it is: basically, a feed where the <link> element of each <item> points to some other site. That's the basic difference. #
Also a linkblog feed should specify the channel-level <image> element, which is used as the avatar for the feed when it appears in a twitter-like timeline.#
I think the only other product that is open to feeds being part of the open social web is Surf from Mike McCue's company, Flipboard. I asked ChatGPT to brief me on how it works with feeds, and saw that we're more or less doing the same thing, except I'm not trying to work with the output from Twitter, Bluesky, etc. Even when they have outbound RSS feeds they aren't good enough to be part of the social web defined by feeds.#
I only want really good feeds. It's time to stop being so careless about what we transmit to the world. If we want an open web we're all going to have to be good gardeners. It's like a food system where all the food is grown by family farmers and I'm running a restaurant, and only want the good stuff, and we want it to look good too! :-)#
PS: Another thing, the feed items must have working guids. All software that runs on feeds should be able to depend on this. #
PPS: Linkblogs aren't the only kinds of feeds that will be used in this RSS-based feediverse. Scripting News will work with it. You would be able to read this post in this new medium (not yet delivered, btw).#
You know those obnoxious sites that pop up dialogs when they think you're about to leave, asking you to subscribe to their email newsletter? Well that won't do for Scripting News readers who are a discerning lot, very loyal, but that wouldn't last long if I did rude stuff like that. So here I am at the bottom of the page quietly encouraging you to sign up for the nightly email. It's got everything from the previous day on Scripting, plus the contents of the linkblog and who knows what else we'll get in there. People really love it. I wish I had done it sooner. And every email has an unsub link so if you want to get out, you can, easily -- no questions asked, and no follow-ups. Go ahead and do it, you won't be sorry! :-)