[dewey]

Having structured feeds of any kind is already a niche and much appreciated when it happens. How to call them correctly technically based on some specs is not the hill to die on.

We call them RSS feeds, RSS reader apps even if it might be implemented as an Atom feed.

[chrismorgan]

The reason I think it matters is that, because people keep on using the name of the wrong format, people keep on using that wrong format when they want to implement feeds. Where if they had known about Atom, or that podcast feeds are the only reason not to use Atom, they would gladly have used Atom.

[sjs382]

Flashback to a memorable bug report complaining that "the JPEGs I'm uploading don't work" but upon further investigation, they were trying to upload HEIC photos. The field was explicit about the formats supported, but to this user, "JPEGs" just meant "images".

[F3nd0]

I have trouble seeing how that helps anyone. It’s not like ‘RSS’ is a widespread term the way ‘Word’ or even ‘Mastodon’ are (and even there I’d argue it’s worthwhile to use technically more correct terms). Why not just use ‘news feed’ as the general term? If you don’t care about the protocol in the first place, that’s far more descriptive and correct, no?

[dewey]

Because if you say "News feed" people are thinking Facebook or Twitter feed. RSS is widely known as it was already integrated in browsers before as a "RSS" button if the site advertised that in the html head.

[F3nd0]

I should think that’s a pretty niche memory among people who browse the internet nowadays, but then I only have anecdotal evidence, so I could be underestimating it. Even so, I think conflating a general type with a format specification is not a good idea overall.

[ymolodtsov]

RSS is the only widespread enough name for this thing. Where you're correct is that it's silly to argue about the name of the format used by approximately three people.

I'm not too serious here but even many news media publications are just dropping it, or separate into dozens of unconnected feeds.