Dave's Bad Mood

It would seem that Dave is in a bad mood this morning.

Phil Ringnalda gave what I thought was perfectly reasonable and logical explanation as to why Blogger opted not to use the Metaweblog API in their beta toolbar. Dave objects. I am surprised Dave even cares, as he is an advocate of the edit this page approach. I use to use the MT Bookmarklets all the time (and I thought the Blogger Bookmarklet was the single coolest feature back when I first used it), but these days I find I just like to log into the MT interface and compose from here. Then I rely on MT-Textile and SmartyPants to make everything look pretty. And Firebird rules, anyway.

He then complains that Mark Pilgrim encouraged people to use the Echo Wiki. And somehow tries to tie in Julian Bond’s comments. Julian is upset that by following Dave’s approach to RSS, it breaks aggregators that did not correctly implement the RSS 2.0 spec. To use my ABC phrasing, If A is B compliant and C is not, C has no room to complain. I think A has a much better understanding of “optional” means than B or C.

Let’s hope Dave gets a good night’s sleep tonight.

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Actually, it appears that Dave was pointing to the discussion of Mark's new, strict, point-making interpretation of RSS 2.0 and the closing of that subsequent conversation (that's where I ended up when I followed his link), not his most recent post sans comments directing people to the wiki.

It does appear that people were pinning down Mark's pedanticism just when he closed that line of conversation.

I've had it with trying to parse Dave, but it bothers me when people take him to task beyond his actual behavior. That will only tend to feed his air of victimization.

Xian,

It has never been my intention to take Dave to task "beyond his actual behavior." And I see what you mean about his comments referring to the RSS thread. I had just read Mark's latest post and thought Dave was making reference to it.

For what it is worth, I agree that Mark is being somewhat stubborn. But I also think he has a point as well. Under Dave's reasoning from Lizard Brain, there should be no need for a link if the guid is configured as a permalink. The fact that most aggregators don't seem to be able to handle guid is their fault, which was probably exacerbated by the fact that most MT users used Mark's original template and did not use guid as a permalink.

Dave has gone above and beyond on RSS. But I just think there is a limit to how much one person can be expected to do. The fact that Dave obviously wanted permalinks to switch from link to guid and nobody figured it out until Dave pointed it out months later shows there is a problem somewhere. Deciding who is to blame is an utter waste of time. Fixing the problem is what is important.

You need to read this, badly.

Lost Art of Insults

There's no time to waste.

I'm in basic agreement with you on this. I'm also watching what I say because who wants to draw flames? I've already felt provoked at times and then regretted it later.

Re, "And I see what you mean about his comments referring to the RSS thread. I had just read Mark's latest post and thought Dave was making reference to it," I realize this. You were not the only person to draw the same conclusion.

As for Mark's behavior, I actually consider his literalist self-crippling of his RSS feed to be a more (slightly more) nuanced version of Dave's brief withhdrawal from weblogging. So instead of "imagine a world without ScriptingNews" we get "imagine a world in which you can't click through to the full-text posts at diveintomark.org from most news aggregators."

The whole thing for me about aggregators is that try as I might (and I have tried a lot of them) I can't seem to find one that works for me. I am a huge fan of Dan Sanderson's blogtracker. So Mark's shenanigans don't affect me. And when Dave went offline, I felt really bad. I was in the middle of writing this very long message about it when I noticed he had returned.

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Dave's Bad Mood

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