RSS would be perfect if…

Brian Alvey writes up a “wish list” for RSS. Brian says “I love RSS. I couldn’t keep up with the embarrassingly small percentage of WIN sites I read if I didn’t have FeedDemon, but there are a few things I wish RSS and feed readers could do.”

Among the items that I found interesting was this excerpt:

I mean, RSS is all about showing you posts, but when bloggers switch from excerpts to full posts in their feeds, most feed readers load all 20 stories again as if they were new. The feed reader only knows which post is which by the date, title and content. Those are all blogger-editable. If I edit a title, does that make it a new post?

I have spent countless hours dealing with RSS item and guid tags. Some feeds use them properly, some don’t, and still others just leave them out. I agree with Brian that RSS needs some work, but it remains a tricky situation (just look at the Atom vs RSS debate).

From Scoble