RSS 2.0 comments element

Monday, November 5, 2007 by Dave Winer.

RayS on Twitter asked why it is that more feed readers don't support the <comments> element in RSS 2.0. Interestingly, less than two hours before, I had added the element to the Scripting News feed. It's appropriate because there are now per-element comments here, people who subscribe should have the benefit in addition to people who read this blog in a web browser. 

Truth is that some feed readers do support the comments element. All of mine do, dating back to Radio 8.0 shipped in January 2002, which is still my daily reader. It's really a simple feature, not very hard to implement. If an item has a comments element, it's represented as a little pencil in the right margin. Click on it and you go directly to the comments. 

Maybe by writing about it here we'll find out that others already support it, and maybe encourage others to add support.