I am going to ask for a discussion about the Wikipedia page for RSS, because I think it misses the significance of RSS, how it became a big thing. It had little to do with the quality of the technical work, there wasn’t much of that, and the quality varied as has been pointed out many times. What made it happen was a vision by some exec at Netscape (whose name is never in the writeups, probably because it isn’t on the Wikipedia page), a pitch, and a leap of faith by publishers: Salon, Red Herring, Wired and Motley Fool. And if they hadn’t, there wouldn’t have been anything worth fighting for. I never would have gotten involved, and blogging might not have been part of RSS, as it was. Then, a few years later, the NYT. And then everyone. It’s an interesting story, imho — and it would be good to make the story available to future would-be innovators. Don’t design a perfect format and expect the world to beat a path to your door, it doesn’t work that way. You have to keep coming back to the problem, try a new approach, gain some traction, and hope you’re not going down a blind alley. The actual story of how it happened belongs on that page. #