On IA in the wild
Saturday, March 5, 2016 by Dave Winer

To Facebook people, the choice of <content:encoded> for the IA content has disadvantages when the feed is used in other contexts.

For example, IFTTT prefers <content:encoded> over <description>.

When you refer to {{EntryContent}}, and both are present it will return <content:encoded>.

This broke the connection between Scripting News and Medium, which is built on IFTTT.

So there are four parties here -- Facebook, IFTTT, Medium, Dave.

In hindsight it probably would have been better to create an IA namespace, and instead of using <content:encoded>, you'd include an <IA:article> or something like that. Having never been used before, it could not be confused with anything that came before.

However, IFTTT could allow an expert mode, where I could somehow say "No, don't use the <content:encoded> stay with the <description> because it works better for Medium."

Or -- even better -- Medium could stop relying on IFTTT to process RSS for it, after all RSS is a well-respected standard (isn't it). You wouldn't outsource HTML to another app, or HTTP. It seems RSS, esp the new rich flavor of it started by FB is something Medium could support directly.

If it falls to me, I will either cut the connection to Medium and wait for something better from them, or produce another feed that will be used for apps that aren't processing IA feeds.

Also, it might not be a bad idea to establish a convention that says "This is an IA feed" in the feed itself. Not sure whose job that is.