Re: Will Atom have a "don't process invalid documents" rule?

["Aaron Swartz" <me@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

I don't think anyone's in favor of this but I'll explain why I'm 
against it anyway.

1. Even if we have this rule, there will be invalid feeds. Someone will 
write some code, they'll test it, it'll work, and then one day they'll 
have a weblog entry that includes AT&T or ]]> or something and their 
feed will break and they won't notice.

2. Aggregators compete for users. Users want to read these feeds, even 
if they're broken. Users will switch to aggregators that read these 
feeds and the rule will be useless, since folks will likely test with 
those aggregators. The only way we can keep the rule in effect is by 
getting _everyone_ who writes an aggregator to act against the wishes 
of their users, which seems like a bad idea.

3. Essentially the same effect can be achieved by having a validation 
display (like Straw's smiley face) and an easy-to-use validator.

4. This is not to say that all aggregators should have to process 
invalid documents, or that they should work have to guess about what 
the feed author meant, or that we should encourage or tolerate bad 
feeds. We should try still try to get rid of bad feeds, but taking 
things out on the users is the wrong way to do it.

--
Aaron Swartz: http://www.aaronsw.com/