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This article was nominated for deletion on January 24, 2007. The result of the discussion was keep. |
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Archives |
/Archived debates 1 contains various debates and related attributed quotes regarding the sections Relationship to the Public (at one point called Criticism) and Credit (currently removed from the article) up to December 2005. A compromise was reached regarding the section Relationship to the Public. You are welcome to edit the section, but please read the archived debate first. |
"headnotes"
Some threads below include quoted text with references.
Old threads
These threads are not currently active, but are relevant to the ongoing dispute. Since this talk page is getting large, I am putting a collapse box around them. --Random832(tc) 20:15, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
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Podcastinghttp://epeus.blogspot.com/2005/12/of-bloggercon-and-podcasting.html Dave did not invent podcasting. Please read the link. —Nirelan The text that was in the article does not say he invented podcasting. Your link doesn't say much of anything at all - it provides a link to an audio file, but I can't read that. —Random8322007-01-26 01:34 UTC (01/25 20:34 EST)
Random, read the part that I have quoted "During one of the breaks, I introduced myself and mentioned that I knew he was interested in Audioblogging (as we called it then), and showed him the Python script I'd written to automatically download mp3 enclosures to iTunes. His reaction was that this was cool, and that I should show it off in the Audioblogging session the next day, which I duly did, thanks to Harold Gilchrist making time for me." Don't say that that was not when podcasting was invented unless you can find an earlier podcast.—Nirelan
Random, content from audioblogs are what the newly written program downloaded. So like I said show me an instance of Dave writing a program that automaticly transferd audio content to an mp3 player before the link I posted was written. Read this from the general discussion "Dave said "Pioneered at Harvard just a few years ago, podcasting has been growing at an amazing rate." Therefore all podcasting information should either go to Harvard or Podcasting." Nirelan Here is another link that decscribes him as "campaigning to be thought of as the creator of podcasting" why would you use that term if the man really invented it. Its easy to tell someone that dosen't know what podcasting is like the media that you invented it but its alot hard to confuse people that really create websites. Nirelan
General DiscussionDave said "Pioneered at Harvard just a few years ago, podcasting has been growing at an amazing rate." Therefore all podcasting information should either go to Harvard or Podcasting. How do you differentiate the terms?... UserLand, Manila, Frontier, Radio. Does Manila refer to the city?... What's the origin of the use of each of these terms?... --User:Donwarnersaklad 9 December 2005
Also, the podcasting content focuses too much on Winer vs. Curry and instead should talk more about the establishement of the enclosure element of RSS 2.0 and specific examples Mr. Winer's evangelism of it's use. (Due to my relationship with Dave, I can not make any of the edits directly) --User:Skirks December 21, 2005 Discussion about Dave Winer article, from which Danny Ayers has removed all his own commentsI made a change to the first sentence of this entry, betsythedivine removed it. I left the reversion and tried to make a case, but my arguments weren't accepted by betsy. I have removed my comments because my neutrality of point of view was disputed. Life's too short. Danja 22:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
See note above. Danja 22:26, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
How encyclopedia-quality sources describe Dave Winer's role wrt SOAP, RSS, blogging, etc.BUSINESS/FINANCIAL DESK Microsoft's New Operating System Is the First Part of Expanded Internet Services By STEVE LOHR (NYT) 1435 words Published: October 22, 2001 ... "Microsoft's pitch to developers is greatly weakened because of that," said Dave Winer, co-author of SOAP and chief executive of UserLand, a developer of Web tools. BUSINESS/FINANCIAL DESK TECHNOLOGY; A Rift Among Bloggers By DAVID F. GALLAGHER (NYT) 1192 words Published: June 10, 2002 "I talk about things Glenn Reynolds doesn't understand, but that doesn't mean they're not important things to talk about," said Dave Winer, founder and chief executive of UserLand Software, whose Scripting News (scripting.com) is one of the oldest blogs. New Food for IPods: Audio by Subscription By CYRUS FARIVAR Published: October 28, 2004, Thursday Mr. Curry's Daily Source Code, a two-month-old show mainly on technology-related subjects, has inspired other podcasters to follow his lead. He came up with the idea for podcasting nearly four years ago, but it wasn't until he spoke soon thereafter with Dave Winer, an early blogger and the inventor of R.S.S., that Mr. Winer was able to modify R.S.S. so that it could support enclosed audio files. I hope this brief collection of NYT material is useful to other editors. betsythedevine 16:26, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
External links discussionBloglinesRemoved Bloglines from the list of tools that get Weblogs.com's pings. Just got a comment on saying that Bloglines doesn't use Weblogs.com's pings. --Nick Douglas 01:42, 8 October 2005 (UTC) Eye on WinerIn the external sites section the links to Eye on Winer, I'm Not Dave seem to be sites using wikipedia and winers content to generate google ad revenue. I'm for removing them. 70.20.13.215 20:35, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
"thus I guess you can't complain." is just plain silly. If the comment has reliable information (In fact, it appears to be incorrect. I see no ads.) that is in-line with the goals of wikipedia, then it should be heard. Attacking the fact that is anonymous, while it may be one of your pecadillios, is not grounds for rejecting the comment. Further, anonymous sites linked on the main page are quite a different thing than anonymous comments on the talk page -- wouldn't you agree? 128.148.37.31 21:15, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Editor 70.109.203.200 replaced the above with the following comment: "In the external sites section the links to Eye on Winer & I'm Not Dave are anonymous but deemed relevant." I reverted this because I don't think it fully summarizes the discussion. If someone wishes to archive and properly summarize this discussion, please do so. Aapo Laitinen 14:27, 8 January 2006 (UTC) DeletionSince Dave did not create blogging or RSS should this page be maintained. I am not against a wiki for RSS, Blogging, or even userland. However, I do not know if simply claiming to be an early adopter of something is enough to have an article written about you. Please do not take this as an insult to anyone.--User:Nirelan
Although Misplaced Pages is supposed to use independant sources this page is made based on information from Mr. Winers own website. That is clearly a violation of the wikipedia guidelines including sources must be written from a neutral point of view, and the no original researchpolicy. That means it violates two of only three content policies.--User:Nirelan
CompromiseYou're still free to list on AfD, but I've replaced your {{prod}} with citation templates. I think the article should be improved, not deleted. (IMO you've also severely misinterpreted both the NPOV and NOOR policies) —Random8322007-01-23T20:59:39UTC(01/23 15:59EST) PS I only added {{self-published}} because I feel it embodies your complaint, I haven't taken the time to look into the claim itself. - This page shouldn't be deleted - Winer is a person of note ("Almost Famous" as Wired had it). A while ago I objected to certain inaccuracies (see discussion with Winer's friend Betsy above),
Winer played a significant role in promoting podcasting, but podcasting is entirely possible without this "feature" (c.f. Atom). In general the reported information still leans somewhat to that which favours Winer, for example it contains :
There's no mention that another of the three Cluetrain Manifesto co-authors, Chris Locke, called Winer "that asshole" trying to set a Googlebomb with that string. http://www.rageboy.com/2003_10_05_blogger-archive.html Danja 20:28, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
Here's how Rageboy himself described the phrase he wanted to propagate: "OK, now here's how the game works. Simply place the exact string 'that asshole, Dave Winer' somewhere on your blog." . If you click the post's title slug, as RB recommends, there's a Google search for that exact four-word string: You get 18 supposedly unique results, of which at least 4 are by RB himself. betsythedevine 21:18, 30 January 2007 (UTC) Section removalsThis section was called "Bad faith edits?", renaming it because at this point it seems uncivil (Random832 19:14, 24 January 2007 (UTC)) I believe that this edit was made in bad faith, because your {{prod}} reason was that there were no external sources, and the section you deleted contained external sources. —Random8322007-01-23T21:15:05UTC(01/23 16:15EST) That edit had nothing to do with wether or not I think the article should be deleted. Misplaced Pages is for facts not opinions. When that section provides a fact about Dave it can be included in the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nirelan (talk • contribs) "Winer is known as one of the more polarizing figures in the blogging community" seems factual enough to me - whether it's correct, I don't know, but fact vs opinion is a different matter. —Random8322007-01-23T21:42:03UTC(01/23 16:42EST) I fully admit you have sources for that section , but having a source dosent mean something is worth being in Misplaced Pages. Statements from co workers definatly shouldn't be included.-- Nirelan Is it ok for me to leave the banner there with yours present until the article is fixed?--Nirelan An edit summary would have been helpful - I did honestly think at that time that you intended to go for an AfD (not that you're not still free to do that) with the same reason as you gave in the prod, and were just deleting sections to make the article worse. I still think the section should be improved rather than deleted wholesale, but I'll accept that your edit was in good faith. —Random8322007-01-23T22:53:22UTC(01/23 17:53EST) I will give you the requried five days to fix the article and I'm sorry if I am being too harsh on this subject, but I feel that the article should be deleted until a relible source can be found. I know that to people who have no expierence in the tech world his contibutions seem signifigant, but he is the owner of a company and only promotes products his company uses. Therefore no article should be based upon what he says. Its like making an article about Windows based on speeches from Microsoft executives. If he would have made RSS or Blogging or something I can accept an article being based on him, but can you honestly tell me that an encyclopedia article can exist only upon the words of someone who is trying to sell a product? --Nirelan
What required five days? You don't get to re-add a {{prod}} after it's been removed. If you want it gone, you have to go through the AFD process and actually substantiate your arguments against this article. —Random8322007-01-24T00:45:39UTC(01/23 19:45EST) If I haven't substantciated my arguments tell me one thing that makes this noteable. This is hype perpatrated on the site of a man that owns a company. There is even a whole section pertaining to what his co workers said about him. The wikipedia guidelines clearly state that numerus third parties need to refrence the subject to make it notable. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 4.159.98.208 (talk • contribs) eweek and wired and oreilley don't count? those were all linked from the article —Random8322007-01-24T03:04:31UTC(01/23 22:04EST) Random, the eweek story and the Weblogs.com info needs to be a seperate article. As for the Wired and Oreilly stories I don't know if they should count because as someone that sells tools to the tech media he has a business relationship with these people.-- Nirelan
I gave Weblogs.com its own article and Userland Software has one. This article just feels like it is opinions on the topics of the forementioned articles from Dave. -- Nirelan In that case, you should work to change this article to make it more neutral. Nominating it for deletion is a statement that you think that he doesn't deserve for there to be an article about him, not that you think the article has problems. As for CNN/Eweek - I really think you should check out WP:NN. And, well, of course most of the media references on a tech subject are going to be tech media - I don't think that's sufficient to create a conflict of interest, at least not in terms of notability; these are professionals we're talking about. And "feels like" isn't much of a reason - there's plenty in this article that doesn't come from him. But, even at face value, your complaint is a POV issue, not something worth nominating it for deletion over. —Random8322007-01-24T19:14:44UTC(01/24 14:14EST) Thanks Random, I agree that an article could be made here, but I don't think it should be done by repeating what is in other articles like the Userland Section does. I also don't think we should have opinions of co workers. Read his latest post on Misplaced Pages http://www.scripting.com/2007/01/24.html#stateOfWikipedia. This article definatly needs the cleaning up I am trying to do.—Nirelan
Relationship to the Public sectionThe history of the article on Dave Winer goes back before my time, but I do know the history of the "Relationship to the Public" section. A year or more ago, somebody deleted a similar section heavy with "original research" and called, non-neutrally, "Criticism of Dave Winer." After a brief edit war (I suggested the compromise of putting the material into the talk page but was over-ruled), Wikipedians suggested a short section of direct-quote criticisms from verifiable sources balanced by a short section of defenses also from verifiable sources. betsythedevine 23:03, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
I will remove the AFD if we make this an article about facts and not just a list of friends or enemies Dave has in the computer world. --NirelanTalk I am deleting it because it is simply unpressidented. Please find one other article about a programmer that has an section like that. --NirelanTalk Removed podcasting mentionAn IP keeps removing this:
Please explain this removal (I don't want to get into an edit war or I'd have put it back.) —Random8322007-01-26 23:29 UTC (01/26 18:29 EST)
3RR WarningOutside 24 hour period:
You have not sought a consensus on this issue and you have not addressed the fact that there was a previous consensus on this section. Your next attempt to delete this section WILL be a violation of the 3RR. —Random8322007-01-27 03:30 UTC (01/26 22:30 EST)
User:Nirelan removed the AfD banner from this pageOn 26 January User:Nirelan removed the AfD banner from this page. I tried to explain to him that it's considered vandalism. (See exchange at User_talk:Nirelan and User_talk:EdJohnston#Winer_AFD). He believes it is fine for him to personally close the AfD debate, and he has followed the steps. I will leave it to more experienced people to try to explain to him how the system works. EdJohnston 04:07, 27 January 2007 (UTC)
Repairing vandalism to this articleLooking back at this article's pre-AFD state (), I notice that two entire sections have vanished during the recent edit war: "Contributions to podcasting" and "Weblogs.com." I am going to restore these two missing sections from the article as it stood on January 24--not because I contend they were perfect but because that's what was here. betsythedevine 17:14, 29 January 2007 (UTC) |
OPML
The article has nothing on the subject's connection to OPML. I'm not knowledgeable on the subject but I think a sentence or two would be in order. Cardiffman 23:29, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Nirelan, Part the Second
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Latest disputeNirelan replaced the page with the following. I am sorry that I have to take this course of action, but please stop trying to associate Dave with technologies that he did not create. Reverting this article is simple so do not get mad about the change just give people time to read the message than revert the article and fix it. 1. Dave played no role in creating RSS. Netscape did that. 2. Dave was certainly not one of the first bloggers. 3. He did not create podcasting or anything associated with it. Read the talk page. "He was the first to implement the feed "enclosure" feature that made podcasting possible. Please explain this removal (I don't want to get into an edit war or I'd have put it back.) —Random8322007-01-26 23:29 UTC (01/26 18:29 EST) I didn't remove the line, but it is inaccurate and misleading and should be removed, or at least substantially modified. The RSS 2.0 enclosure element is neither necessary or sufficient for podcasting (the same role is covered in Atom and for that matter RSS 1.0). Winer did add this element to RSS 2.0, but the facility it provides was already available in web standards (any URI/link can potentially have a media object representation, and hence act as an enclosure, this can be determined using HTTP content negotiation). The promotion of the podcasting mode of media delivery (in which Winer played a major role) was considerably more significant than any implementation detail. Danja 11:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC) "
02:03, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
It's also worth noting that Danja's objections were addressed - the line that was removed was later "substantially modified" to de-emphasize the importance of Winer's contributions. --Random832(tc) 02:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC) Nirelan persists in failing to understand what a talk page is for: This page may state that Dave has done some things that even other wikipedia pages prove that he did not do.
"RDF Site Summary, the first version of RSS, was created by Ramanathan V. Guha of Netscape in March 1999 for use on the My Netscape portal."
"He was the first to implement the feed "enclosure" feature that made podcasting possible. Please explain this removal (I don't want to get into an edit war or I'd have put it back.) —Random8322007-01-26 23:29 UTC (01/26 18:29 EST) I didn't remove the line, but it is inaccurate and misleading and should be removed, or at least substantially modified. The RSS 2.0 enclosure element is neither necessary or sufficient for podcasting (the same role is covered in Atom and for that matter RSS 1.0). Winer did add this element to RSS 2.0, but the facility it provides was already available in web standards (any URI/link can potentially have a media object representation, and hence act as an enclosure, this can be determined using HTTP content negotiation). The promotion of the podcasting mode of media delivery (in which Winer played a major role) was considerably more significant than any implementation detail. Danja 11:13, 28 January 2007 (UTC) " The article does not claim that Dave first created RSS - do you deny that he had substantial involvement in later versions? The article does not claim that Dave invented podcasting. And, you are assuming that your POV on what "one of the first" must mean for blogs is fact. --Random832(tc) 03:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC) References for the 'Contributions to Podcasting' sectionSomeone put up the 'unreferenced' banner in this section. There is a blow-by-blow timeline in History of podcasting for 2003 and 2004 with a ton of references, at least links to blog postings. Some of those references could be brought over here. I think it's reasonable to accept a blog posting at least as evidence of the poster's views, if not as confirmation of external facts. EdJohnston 03:18, 7 February 2007 (UTC) NirelanI'm really trying to be patient with you. You've raised some valid points about how things are phrased, and I've tried to change the article to be more clear about these. I don't understand the view you seem to have that because he wasn't the original author, his contributions to RSS as it stands today are insignificant; or that because the feature he first implemented was only one piece of the puzzle, podcasting should not be mentioned in this article at all. But i'm still trying to work with you - please see the latest version of the article - is there any way you think things should be made more clear? What do you think of the changes I've made to address your objections? --Random832(tc) 04:42, 7 February 2007 (UTC) P.S. please read WP:SUMMARY for why you shouldn't just be blanking sections entirely when the bulk of the content should be split into its own article. Random, I have a problem because in this article you talk about Dave saying he made RSS popular ,even thought it was made and promoted by a major company, yet on the Ramanathan V. Guha page inventing RSS is basicly a footnote. I don't understand how one man telling people to use it deserves more text in an article than is given to the inventor of the technology. I have given you the name of the technology's inventor and therefor proven that Dave did not invent and does not control RSS. He has nothing more to do with it than you or I do yet you still insist on trying to word the article as if he has some controlling connection to RSS. If the man didn't make RSS he didn't make it. The only reason to associate him with it is to make him sound important enough to have an article.
You can say I vandalized the article ,but even after I and other people have told you that these things are not true you merely change the wording a little bit. Bill Clinton can define he word is ,but the definition is still the same! Quit trying to associate him with things he likes.--(Nirelan shout)
I made the article focus on what he did by talking about his company and BloggerCon. However now that even you admit he didn't create blogging or RSS you still want to include those things. --(Nirelan/shout)
You stated "that DOES NOT mean that what he did do is not relevant" and I agree. RSS, blogging and podcasting are not what he did. Starting a company and BloggerCon is what he did.--(Nirelan/shout)
If he was the person that made decisions about RSS or something it would be relavent, but RSS is a standard. No one person makes a decision. Associating him with RSS is like associating Windows with one of the hundreds or thousands of people that have worked on it.--(Nirelan/shout) Adding to the article, removing stuff from the articleDespite the complaints of Nirelan and the repeated vandalism of this article he used to get attention to those complaints, this article errs more on the side of omitting relevant information than on the side of giving Dave Winer too much credit for technologies in which he played a major role. For example, BloggerCon 1 and 2 get summed up in a sentence. And the main BloggerCon article isn't much more informative either about these events or Dave Winer's role in them. When the Register runs a huge flame-war against BloggerCon and , they have no doubt that BloggerCon = Dave Winer. But when Misplaced Pages gives credit, it's to "Dave Winer and friends." For another example, Dave's evangelism of OPML has inspired a lot of new stuff including most recently Placeblogger.com. I hesitate to add this stuff because I'm no expert and it'd be good if some expert who isn't a friend of Dave would do it. But if nobody will do that stuff maybe I will. Random832 has done yeoman work trying to meet the complaints of NIrelan, but I think in two instances too much stuff was taken out. First, Dave's sale of Weblogs.com belongs in this article. Second, I don't think it's appropriate to pull so much information about RadioUserland out of this article. Surely the Bill Gates article includes substantial detail about Microsoft under his leadership? betsythedevine 14:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Reality CheckIMHO- this is probably one of the most troubled articles about a person I've seen. The relentless vandalism and arguments are inexplicable. There are often dozens of edits daily. I think Nirelan should no longer edit this article has that user seems to be one of the major problems. So many claims that user has made without referencing anything. Clearly a personal problem from him. David Winer is a hugely influential and polarizing person, his article should be NPOV and well written, we owe to ourselves and readers to do a much better job at keeping personal feelings out of this article and sticking to published, referenced information. The fact that Someone actually considered this for an AfD is insane. I've added this to my own watch list and I'll definitely try to keep a close eye on its improvement.Testerer 18:19, 7 February 2007 (UTC) Trying to Improve thingsAs agreed upon before, this article is a mess. I've tried to subdivided and insert refs wherever possible. I think it might need a full edit but we'll try and avoid that for now. In the future- PLEASE DO NOT ERASE or REMOVE information unless you have good reason to do so and can prove your point in it's removal. The discussion page should be used regarding all major edits and if we work together and be fair, this article should be well written and complete in a matter of days.Testerer 19:05, 7 February 2007 (UTC) Tester tell me what I have not proven.
Which RSS? RSS .91, RSS .92, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0? You really believe that the guy who created Rich Site Summary for netscape gets all the credit for continued improvements and in fact major upgrades to the protocol? To say RSS is lazy, there are many versions of RSS, some Winer and Guha co-authored, others were sole authored by David Winer.Testerer 20:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
I don't think any one person invented blogging, but that should not get in the way of fairly describing the obviously important role that Dave Winer has played in the history and evolution of blogging. To use the word "pioneer" does not mean he invented it. Frankly he should get a short mention on his roll in blogging and everything thing else should go into the history of blogging article. FWIW- Adam Curry, Leo Laporte, Dave Winer, Dawn and Drew and many others were early pioneers in podcasting. Pioneer does not = sole creator and inventor. Testerer 20:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
http://epeus.blogspot.com/2005/12/of-bloggercon-and-podcasting.html This is perhaps the most insane link I've ever seen. You say that 1 guy created podcasting at a convention started by Winer and others from Harvard, and to prove this, you link to that guys blog where he says he created it? Insane. I can't claim to have landed on the moon when my only proof is my own blog post about how I once landed on the moon.Testerer 20:04, 7 February 2007 (UTC) Linking to blogs to prove your point is not up to the standard of wikipedia. This information is not correct. More importantly, recent edits that say Winer was invited by microsoft to help develop XML-RPC could not be further from reality. There is a known and much talked about rift regarding this very subject. Kevin marks did not invent podcasting at BloggerCon. You can't link to his blog where he claims such a thing and call it proof. Not only is it absurd it is not definitive. This is a case where stubbornness and vandalism have ruined an article. Also, PLEASE sign your edits. 4 of thesse "~" please. Testerer 19:59, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
RFCI am considering whether or not to file an RfC against Nirelan regarding this article. Anyone else have any thoughts? --Random832(tc) 20:09, 7 February 2007 (UTC) File it man, he's ruining this article. I've already reported him to an admin I know.Testerer 20:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC) Glaring ErrorThis article gives no credit to David Winer for his important roles in pioneering podcasting. It is a glaring omission as are the details of his work with OPML, and details about the importance of BloggerCon. This article has been hijacked by people who wish to rewrite history. The only mentions of podcasting are his own podcast and a few external links. From the actual Podcast article in Misplaced Pages.
And I think we can all agree that Dave founded Radio Userland right? So why does he not get credit in this article? Why has vandalism been stopped in the podcast article but not in this article? Again from the "History of Podcasting" article:
This information has now been ported into this article for clarity and fairness. It is entirely sourced and has stood the test of time being the starting point of the history time line in the history of podcasting article. It will continue to be included in this article until it is proven to be incorrect, which would change the history article drastically. It does not give unfair credit to Winer but does fairly, and accurately describe history. Kevin Marks did not invent podcasting in 2003. This goes back to October 2000.Testerer 20:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC) RSS 2.0From the undisputed actual article on RSS in wikipedia "In September 2002, Winer released a final successor to RSS 0.92, known as RSS 2.0 and emphasizing "Really Simple Syndication" as the meaning of the three-letter abbreviation. The RSS 2.0 spec removed the type attribute added in RSS 0.94 and allowed people to add extension elements using XML namespaces. Several versions of RSS 2.0 were released, but the version number of the document model was not changed." RSS 2.0 is what podcasters and subscribers use today, this is why Winer is given what credit he is given.Testerer 20:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
Suprise! More Vandalism!Why would anyone put this in the main article? Please prove that he made something important to podcasting. You can't say he created the enclosure becuase that is already available in Atom and URIs. I fully admit he used it but he did not create it. Danja has already proved that.
Seriously? RSS 2.0 with enclosures is what the vast majority of people use to syndicate their podcasts. Someone please, please, please put a leash on this puppy.Testerer 20:31, 7 February 2007 (UTC) 10 References in the Winer and Podasting subsection10 refs are now in the Winer and Podcasting subsection, since this is turned into a shouting match, I thought I'd point that out. 10 refs working to substantiate a mere 3 paragraphs. Good work!Testerer 20:34, 7 February 2007 (UTC) Tester please prove to me that URIs and Atom can not link to media. If at the very least those two standards can do it then Dave did not invent the enclosure. Nirelan He helped create enclosures in RSS 2.0, which is what this discussion should be about.Testerer 06:09, 8 February 2007 (UTC) "URIs" is meaningless - that's like saying that <object> and <embed> have absolutely no advantage over <a> in HTML. RSS antedates Atom. And it doesn't say "invented", it says "first to implement". there is a difference. --Random832(tc) 20:44, 7 February 2007 (UTC) URIs having that capeability is not meaningless because RSS uses them. If Atom did it first he obviously wasnt the first to implement it. Nirelan The question is, was he one of the firsts to implement them into RSS, again, Atom has nothing to do with it. Very few people use Atom for podcast syndication.Testerer 06:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC) Look up the word "antedate" please - I've changed my above comment to include a wiktionary link for your convenience - Atom came after RSS. --Random832(tc) 21:22, 7 February 2007 (UTC) and my point was, "can link to media" is NOT the sum total of what enclosure does.
I see that you now acknowledge that Dave only did it after someone else so I am happy. Nirelan
He most certainly did not make enclousures! Tristan Louis did!
The diffWell - here's the results of today's "storm" - - I like to think that at least something net positive came out of this - the article is better than it was before. --Random832(tc) 01:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC) When looking at this diff, be aware that some of the info was split out into the linked "Main article"s for the subsections. I don't know how much should be here and how much there, but just be aware if restoring content that it may not have been actually deleted, just moved. 63.107.91.99 02:44, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
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Restoring information about Weblogs.com
I have just re-added part of the earlier Weblogs.com info that I think is particularly relevant to Dave Winer as opposed to material that belongs only to the Weblogs.com article.
First, the flame war surrounding Dave's ending free hosting at Weblogs.com keeps getting re-visited ( e.g. )--so we might as well try to frame it in enclopedia-quality terms with a direct quote from a contemporaneous encyclopedia-quality source.
Second, Dave's sale of Weblogs.com for $2.3 M made all the major trade papers at the time, and quite a few of those stories are still online: , , and more. In the small world of blogging and software design, so few of anyone's achievements or successes get such recognition--surely when something rises to this level we shouldn't let Nirelan succeed in deleting it from Dave's biography. betsythedevine 03:10, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Agreement
Listen, you said we have to agree that what goes on that article is correct and everyone agrees on what I put there. We all know that some of you are Dave's friends and if you put something like he pioneered RSS you can tell someone that knows the truth that you didn't say he invented it, but you can tell people that don't know the truth that he is responsible for it. You are trying to give things vauge wording so you can associate things with him that he may support. He cleary did or did not do the things I put in the article theres no vauge opinions. --Nirelan Nirelan
What is true that you "put on there"? That Kevin Marks invented podcasting in 2003 at Bloggercon? When the history of podcasting goes back to 2000? Question: what was RSS 2.0 released? What's the difference between, Rich Site Summary and Really Simple Syndication? To say that enclosures existed in another syndication format is true, but ti doesn't change that fact that we all use RSS 2.0 which was initially released as an update to previous versions created by both Winer and others, and RSS 2.0 is what we're all using? He's not "responsible" for podcasting, he didn't invent it, no one person invented it, I think that is why it is both important to keep it that way, and cool that it really is that way! You keep referring to things you "put in the article" well Nirelan, here is something you "put in the article",
I didn't remove the line, but it is inaccurate and misleading and should be removed, or at least substantially modified. The RSS 2.0 enclosure element is neither necessary or sufficient for podcasting (the same role is covered in Atom and for that matter RSS 1.0). Winer did add this element to RSS 2.0, but the facility it provides was already available in web standards (any URI/link can potentially have a media object representation, and hence act as an enclosure, this can be determined using HTTP content negotiation). The promotion of the podcasting mode of media delivery (in which Winer played a major role) was considerably more significant than any implementation detail.
Why would anyone put this in the main article and not on the talk page? Plus it was posted with a bogus name, no sig like someone else I know who likes to edit this article. ;)
To say that you don't get it, would be more than fair. It's a disappointment that you seem to think that some of us are Dave Fanboys. I think that anyone who reads Dave disagrees with his strong opinions as often as they are inclined to agree. You may not know this, but this article is quite old, it's history has been troubled because he does tend to be a polarizing figure. In fact, in much earlier versions of this article existed about a 1/2 dozen quotes by famous people about Dave Winer. Half of them were positive, half where quite critical. That was a great way of dealing with the subject of this article in a real and human way, inherently ref'd by the people who said them themselves.
Obviously you are not a fan of Dave Winer, maybe he's even posted about you and you are upset? Seriously though, stop wreaking havoc on this article because you think it gives him undue credit. I implore you, I think others do also. Read the articles for Adam Curry, Kevin Mark, hell look at what is says for Tristan Louis
"In the early 2000s, Louis was involved in the development community surrounding RSS and podcasting, proposing a number of amendments to the specifications of the time. The proposal included creating a date element for every item in an RSS feed and provided the theoretical framework to distribute data files over an RSS channel, anticipating what is now known as podcasting."
Many people worked on what would become podcasting, nowhere in this article does it say he is the one guy who is responsible for it. You say that Kevin Marks invented podcasting, how could you give him all the credit if RSS was invented by Guha? This article didn't even have the graduation year of his High School at Bronx Science, if you go to that page, he's not listed as Alumni. There are too many big holes in this article to argue over the degree to which he helped/pioneered/created/developed/assisted in the evolution of podcasting, but he did release the 1st RSS 2.0, yes, the spec has evolved with help from him and others, who are fairly credited, but we're all still using RSS 2.0. Please sign your post. 4x~ :) Testerer 06:06, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
And can someone who knows the history of both, please do major edits to include detailed information on Winer and BloggerCon and the impact and Winer related history regarding OPML, someone should definitely also expand the article for Radio Userland. Thanks to Betsy and others who help improve this article.Testerer 06:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Tester I have no problem saying he supported RSS or something ,but you are making him sound more important than he was. In the opening paragraph it says "Winer was the first to implement the feed "enclosure" feature, one of several necessary ingredients for podcasting at the time it first emerged" then in the podcasting section it says "special "audio" and "video" tags in RSS Feeds to link to specific file types was proposed in 2000 in a draft by Tristan Louis." Tristian Louis cleary did it before Dave. - Nirelan
<Sigh> If you read it again, it says Dave is the one who wrote and released RSS 2.0 incorporating older versions. We all still use RSS 2.0. Tristan Louis proposed the idea yes, but in 2000, not until later, Summer of 2002 was RSS 2.0 released. Sorry but, why haven't you been blocked from impeding the progress of this article? Testerer 17:14, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
OPML
OPML the article says "Originally developed by Radio UserLand as a native file format for an outliner application, it has since been adopted for other uses, the most common being to exchange lists of RSS feeds between RSS aggregators." Where is the proof that he was the one that made it there? -- Nirelan
the OPML article also mentions, e.g., his proposal for validation, etc - why doesn't that at least qualify for "contributed significantly"? --Random832(tc) 16:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
He's got a point, at least as it stands. Can someone get a reference on Winer's personal contribution to OPML so we can put it in there? (note to Nirelan: a less controversial way to do this would be to write {{cn}} after the OPML statement (and, maybe, delete it after a week if no cite is provided) , NOT to delete it with no explanation.) --Random832(tc) 16:52, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
OPML was created in 2000 by Radio Userland , during which time Dave was CEO working on centralized RSS news aggregators and content management. He also released a beta OPML validator. and wrote the first OPML 2.0 spec available for public DRAFT.. It should also be noted that in the main article for OPML the 1st "see also" is guess who? Nirelan, "prove to us" who else, besides David Winer created OPML. I mean, Winer does own OPML.org and FWIW- OPML is about outlining content in structured trees, to say its about lists of RSS feeds is not entirely correct. Random He didn't just "propose" validation, he wrote the beta validator. Not mentioning alot about OPML in this article is like leaving out the podcasting stuff. Testerer 17:11, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
- I agree it needs to be mentioned, I'm just saying that cites are necessary since this is clearly a contentious article, even if Nirelan's gone someone else will just come along in six months and it's better to have cites. I did put back in the mention of it with {{cn}}, and it should be fairly easy to find a cite - someone also needs to write a section about it. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Random832 (talk • contribs) 17:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC).
I can't believe Nirelan is seriously proposing that Dave Winer is not the author of OPML. That's such a ridiculous claim. The 2.0 draft spec claims authorship by "Dave Winer, Berkeley, California". "I am both the designer of the OPML format and the author of this specification." Both specs http://www.opml.org/spec and http://www.opml.org/spec2 are signed "DW". The claim that he didn't create OPML seems to me to require some extraordinary support. Is there anyone else who claims to have created it? I can't find any such thing. (I wouldn't be surprised if Nirelan claimed that "DW" might not really be Dave Winer now. That seems to be the level of argument here.) 207.180.187.46 18:32, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
I completely agree with the above comment. Dave created and named OPML during his time at Userland Software. Period. I also don't think he can fairly demand that we prove this and that, everyone but Nirelan seems to be citing sources that are publicly accepted and available. Nirelan, if Winer did not author OPML, who did? It dawns on me that all of this technical "Who wrote what" discussion is really tolerant of Nirelan, I mean, let's discuss it sure, but if you go to the publicly available CV for Dave Winer it lists all of his major accomplishments as well as vocational experience, education etc. Very few people as public as Dave Winer are going to claim credit for the kinds of things he does in his CV knowing full well that it can be disputed and cause irreparable damage to both credibility and reputation. All of it can be proven or he'd never post it so boldly, this may be my opinion, but I think it is worth noting.
- 2002: RSS 2.0, sole author.
- 2001: RSS 0.92, sole author.
- 2000: SOAP 1.1, co-author, with Microsoft and IBM.
- 2000: OPML 1.0, sole author.
- 1999: RSS 0.91, co-author, with Netscape.
- 1998: XML-RPC, co-author, with Microsoft.
Pretty cut and dried, and all of this matches up with his work history as well. I do think that Netscape's Rich Site Summary get's a bit shafted in this, but only because Guha, and not Netscape inclusively is given so much credit in this area. Betsy had a great point before about this very issue.Testerer 18:57, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
"© Copyright 2000 UserLand Software, Inc. All Rights Reserved." That is from the OPML 1 page. I'll admit that the second one says he is the sole developer, but It was clearly copyrighted by Userland before Dave claimed to be the sole author. --Nirelan
On inclusion of RSS 0.9 author in lead para, etc
I don't think it's appropriate to shift the focus of the lead paragraph of Dave Winer's own article to other people's accomplishments. This should be mentioned briefly in the section of this article about each respective thing, and of course, the RSS article itself (etc) would tell the whole story. --Random832(tc) 16:43, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
If working on it and not only inventing it is important why can't we list the inventor's name? It seems that someone is just trying to promote Dave. -- Nirelan
The inventor's name can be and is listed at the RSS (file format) article, and could be added to the section in this article further down that deals with Winer's contributions to RSS. Listing it up top just bloats the lead para with information that's not directly relevant to the subject of the article. --Random832(tc) 16:49, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
- It seems like such a short time ago that somebody else was trying to insert into this article the information that Dan Libby "really" invented RSS at Netscape. With all respect to Libby, and to Guha as well, where is the verifiable, encyclopedia-quality source stating that either of them did. I look at the Misplaced Pages article for Ramanathan V. Guha and I find the only source given for the statement that he invented RSS is his own claim made to Marc Andreessen. This seems like a very slender basis for trying to insert that claim into this article even once, let along every time RSS is mentioned. betsythedevine 17:19, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
- I took the RSS article at face value - I've added {{citecheck}} so people there can check these and find more appropriate references if applicable, or otherwise remove the claims --Random832(tc) 17:28, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
- More on the "inventor" of RSS--here's Dan Libby in August of 2000 saying "I was the primary author of the RSS 0.9 and 0.91 spec." Libby makes no mention of Guha's being the "inventor" of RSS, although he does mention the usefulness of "guha's RDFDB and similar tools". To be clear, nobody is claiming that Dave Winer single-handedly "invented" RSS. But the claim that Guha or Libby "invented RSS" is a not-very-well-documented oversimplification of events that took place long ago, at the very beginning of the complex history of RSS. betsythedevine 19:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
- I took the RSS article at face value - I've added {{citecheck}} so people there can check these and find more appropriate references if applicable, or otherwise remove the claims --Random832(tc) 17:28, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
"I don't think it's appropriate to shift the focus of the lead paragraph of Dave Winer's own article to other people's accomplishments." Maybe you should list things that he was more than just a "contributor" in the lead paragraph.-- Nirelan
That would be not accurate Nirelan. He was in fact the sole author of many of the formats so to say merely contributor would not be accurate.Testerer 18:59, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Microsoft's XML-RPC?
I just remove the word "Microsoft's" before XML-RPC in the top of the main article because it is not accurate. XML-RPC was "first created by Dave Winer of UserLand Software in 1998 with Microsoft." This has been understood for quite some time, thus XML-RPC is not "Microsoft's" at all. That's why I removed it. I also added OPML back in with a ref to the article in Misplaced Pages on OPML that clearly states its origin also. I think Nirelan should stop blanking out data if cannot prove it is false or somehow not accurate.Testerer 19:13, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Tester, how can you say something like that? Even Dave's site disproves that.
"That's not exactly true. Before folklore becomes reality, XML-RPC was originally, privately, called SOAP, when Don Box and I were working with Bob Atkinson and Mohsen Al-Ghosein at Microsoft, in early 1998.
UserLand had a protocol before that called "RPC", I announced it in DaveNet, and they asked if I'd like to work with them on this. " http://www.xmlrpc.com/stories/storyReader$555 You can cleary see that Userland had a protocol called RPC ,but XML-RPC is something that Micorsot invited other people to help them make. -- Nirelan
Request for comment on Nirelan's edits
Would users, including Nirelan if he wishes to do so, please add their own comments to the RfC page . betsythedevine 20:55, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
- After the IP address 70.104.126.193 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) got a final vandalism warning, Nirelan has re-started the clock by making edits using a different IP address, 71.244.175.212 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log). In order for anyone to act on the RfC, some user other than me has to add information regarding these incidents and how we have tried to resolve them here. Otherwise, the RfC gets deleted 48 hours after it was filed. betsythedevine 01:02, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Besty, please tell the truth. I was cleared of the vandalism by the first admin you went to ,who is obviously your friend btw, and instead of talking in the discussion tab you have gone from admin to admin in a desprate attempt to block me. -- Nirelan
- Nirelan, please tell the truth. User:Ganfon was approached by User:Testerer and not by me. I only learned later that this interaction occurred and that you had succeeded in persuading Ganfon that you were just trying to "improve" the article--you claimed that those of us who oppose you are just "fanboys" of Dave Winer. Ganfon later admitted on my talk page that he/she looked at just a few of your recent edits where you had just changed a word or two without knowing about all your page-blanking, multiple reverts of other users' consensus, etc. I don't know Ganfon or Testerer or anybody else here--friendliness and civility between editors is supposed to be the norm here. What you are doing is against the policies of Misplaced Pages and also against the spirit of Misplaced Pages and I will keep on trying to stop your vandalism. betsythedevine 16:44, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Update on RfC: Nirelan (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and his two sock-puppet IPs 70.104.126.193 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) and 71.244.175.212 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · filter log · WHOIS · RDNS · RBLs · http · block user · block log) were blocked from editing Misplaced Pages for 96 hours. Less than 12 hours after Ryulong blocked all three, Nirelan has registered yet another sockpuppet to continue vandalizing this article. betsythedevine 16:44, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Living Videotext
When you insist on giving Dave credit for things he did not create ,like RSS, and will not even make an article about a company he created you are clearly biased. -- Nirelan
- When you persist in violating WP:NPA and WP:FAITH by accusing everyone here of being biased, I hope you don't mind if I post here the comments you yourself wrote on Dave Winer's blog on the very day you started vandalizing this article, January 23 ( )
- I would like Dave to admit that he did not create or play any part in the creation of RSS, blogging, outliners, or podcasting.
- Dave I have listed your wikipedia entry as an article proposed for deletion. You got an audience by implying that you either created or played an important role in the development of the technologies I listed. However, many people can show that you did not.
- For example, today you implied that podcasting has some connection to Harvard when it clearly does not. You have been trying to tie yourself to that technology since Adam Curry invented it.
This is the POV you have brought to this article, wasting the time of many hard-working edits as you try trick after trick to carry out some personal feud against Winer. And I might add that, judging from your contributions so far, you don't seem to know or care much about the history of "RSS, blogging, outliners, or podcasting." Your only interest in any of these seems to be to try to find some obscure blogpost somewhere suggesting that someone other than Dave Winer should get the entire credit. betsythedevine 17:03, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Nirelan2
I have reported Nirelan for sockpuppetry. --Random832(tc) 16:59, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Random I never said that wasn't me. Besty broke the rules by going to a different moderator after the first one said I was trying to contribute to this article. -- Nirelan
- You lied to that first moderator and he admitted his mistake. And, the appropriate action to take is NOT to create another account, but to post {{unblock}} on your user talk page. --Random832(tc) 17:19, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks, Random832. betsythedevine 17:36, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
What a shame we have to deal with this instead of just focusing on a simple and accurate Bio. Thank you Random, Betsy, others who've vastly improved this article, even over the last week. And yes, it was I who 1st contacted Ganfon for help, not Betsy. All in all, I think this article is better today than it was a week ago, hopefully it will improve next week and...Testerer 18:16, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
I have cited what I put there. You guys have broken many rules including removing information that was proven to be true because I cited the sources and you went from moderator to moderator. -- Nirelan
- Nirelan, nobody is removing "information" but you. Way more than 3 reverts have been done by all of us on your repeated attempts to put "Microsoft's" in front of XML-RPC and "Netscape's" in front of RSS 2.0. When you keep re-inserting those claims, you are trying to add POV, not information.
- Your "citation", which does not support either of your additions, and with which you attempted to replace an encyclopedia-quality source, is a commercial page of unknown authorship with no footnotes, no authority, nada. . I might add that your citation gives much more credit to Dave Winer for the history of RSS than you do. People here have cited many different rules that you and your sockpuppets have broken, most trivially the WP:NPA and WP:3RR. Misplaced Pages has many different resources available for trying to get admins to deal with a disruptive user--in fact, those pages are a bit of a labyrinth that I'm having a hard time finding my way around. Trying to defend Misplaced Pages against POV vandalism and sockpuppetry is not against any rules that I know about. betsythedevine 19:04, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Betsy one of the pages I cited is from Dave's company!-- Nirelan
- Nirelan, Misplaced Pages has rules and policies about what kind of pages are "encyclopedia-quality" sources and what kind are not. But I don't want to break the 3RR myself, so I will leave your latest reversion for somebody else to deal with. I must add, however, that the changes you keep re-making amount to your many-more-than-three times reversions of corrections that other users have made to your misstatements. betsythedevine 19:25, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Besty, there are other links to Userland sites in this article. Why is my link from the site not encyclopedia quality when the same company's content has clearly been used before? -- Nirelan
Nirelan's latest sockpuppet Nirelan2 (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · nuke contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) has already made 6 reverts with this new username to Dave Winer:
- 1st revert:22:24, 8 February 2007
- 2nd revert: 16:09, 9 February 2007
- 3rd revert: 18:40, 9 February 2007
- 4th revert: 19:08, 9 February 2007
- 5th revert: 20:20, 9 February 2007
- 6th revert: 20:45, 9 February 2007)
With all these reverts, Nirelan2 keeps trying to make three changes to the summary of Dave Winer's bio, all three of these changes calculated to reduce or remove credit to Dave for technologies he has been part of.
Item 1. The summary already very much understates Dave's role when it says he "contributed" to RSS. But Nirelan keeps trying to reduce that credit even further, so that Dave is said to have contributed to "Netscape's RSS". Even if RDF and/or RSS .91 were invented at Netscape, which abandoned those technologies 15 years ago, there is no reason to describe RSS as "Netscape's" --except if your goal is to muddy technology history and to give all credit to anybody but Dave Winer.
Item 2. Dave did major work toward creating XML-RPC and so did some people at Microsoft. But there is no reason for Dave's bio summary to refer to XML-RPC as "Microsoft's XML-RPC." It isn't, in any sense, the creation or the possession of Microsoft. So why insert "Microsoft's" into Dave's bio summary? No reason, except to muddy the historical waters and make Dave's technical contributions look unimportant.
Item 3. Dave's contributions to podcasting have been many, but the one that got into his bio summary was that he first "implemented" the enclosure tag. That is, he modified RSS to use it, his company modified its blogware to enable it, his company modified its aggregator to let their users access audioblog posts. Nirelan and his sockpuppets have removed, many times, a simple sentence saying Dave first implemented enclosure tags. Their argument--somebody else proposed "sound" and "video" tags, therefore Dave made no contribution to podcasting.
Well, these are only the latest of the changes Nirelan has been trying to make here--aside from his early antics of blanking pages, removing sections, etc. This is not a content dispute. This is an effort by a multiply-banned user to insert his POV into the article about somebody with whom he has a feud, and to do so in such a way that he will be able to damage that person's online reputation. We should never let Misplaced Pages be used as a weapon this way. — Preceding unsigned comment added by betsythedevine (talk • contribs) 21:36, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
Sorry I left off my sig, I must have forgotten to add the right tilde-ness. betsythedevine 21:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
"Any reasonable reader, reviewing the history of this page..."
User:MarkBernstein speaks for most of us here, in hisresponse to the RfC on Nirelan
Any reasonable reader, reviewing the history of this page in recent weeks, would conclude that Nirelan is eager to minimize Dave Winer's accomplishments, rather than to report them. If the page can be erased: good. If not, can entire sections be erased? If not, can each sentence in each section be erased? Can any other contributor be assigned credit? If so, all credit be assigned to the collaborator. The community has been more than patient with Nirelan, who is clearly willing to pay any price and expend as much of the community's time as possible, in order to accomplish an essentially negative result that clearly seems to be based in some personal grievance or grudge. MarkBernstein 15:23, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
betsythedevine 20:09, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
"Any reasonable reader, reviewing the history of this page in recent weeks, would conclude that Nirelan is eager to minimize Dave Winer's accomplishments,"
Exactly. This is what all of us, who (imho) are being far to diplomatic in this situation must feel. This article is full of this kind of vague language 'He created some and contributed significantly to the rest of these popular dialects'.
With all due respect to everyone helping, who wrote this dung? This says nothing, dialects? How is it possible that one user can entirely ruin an article. Dave was the sole author, creator and inventor of many things. He, like many, many others on the internet is also an opinionated loudmouth. This divisiveness and his often polarizing vibe have been characterized well in this article with real life quotes from associates and people who can say it better than any of us can. Yet, we've all allowed Nirelan, Nirelan2, Danja, various IPs all equaling one, very determined person to destroy what should be an informative and easy to write wiki. Winer is a very public figure, his CV is easily found and verifiable. Yet Nirelan and his various masks have essentially raped the experience, and though he never is able to offer any proof of anything, I'm desperately trying to use work safe language here, he's a troll. That's it. A Troll and I have a feeling if he were to be blocked somehow, this article would sort itself out just fine. Testerer 07:35, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
- I am not Nirelan! As far as I can remember I have only made one constructive edit of the entry, which was promptly reverted. Since Betsythedevine disputed my neutral pov, I won't attempt any more edits. Danja 08:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- It could also be said : "Any reasonable reader, reviewing the history of this page would conclude that certain editors are eager to maximize Dave Winer's accomplishments". While it sounds like Nirelan has been committing acts of vandalism, the fact remains that this page still reads like a piece of PR. Attempts to correct inaccuracies associated with Winer's contributions are generally met with reversion. Sure, block Nirelan, but until Winer's personal friends (and sycophants) acknowledge their bias and back off, this entry will remain poor quality. Danja 08:44, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- Nirelan aka Nirelan2 aka Nick Irelan aka Nick Irelan aka a couple of sock IPs has been blocked from editing for a few days. In one of those edits, he replaced the entire Dave Winer article with a talk comment previously made and signed by Danja aka Danny Ayers, hence Testerer's misapprehension. What Nick Irelan and Danny Ayers have in common is the belief that Dave Winer's bio should be modified so that his contributions, no matter how many encyclopedia-quality references vouch for them, should be made to sound as unimportant as possible. What I would like to see this article contain is an accurate and well-sourced account, not an inflated one. It's understandable that an accurate bio reads like inflated PR to people who have a strong anti-Dave POV. The inclusion of a short section devoted to criticisms of Dave Winer, balanced (as is Misplaced Pages policy) by statements of the opposite POV, was intended to satisfy people who wanted the anti-Dave POV to get included. But surely the most interesting and notable stuff about Dave Winer is what he's done, not what people said about him. betsythedevine 11:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks for the (partial) correction Betsythedevine. However the statement that I hold the belief that Dave Winer's bio should be modified so that his contributions, no matter how many encyclopedia-quality references vouch for them, should be made to sound as unimportant as possible is a blatant untruth, and does little for your own credibility. Danja 00:22, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Another View on Winer's Contributions
This viewpoint may be worth considering:
My overall view of Dave Winer is that he has brilliant ideas ahead of their time and then does such poor implementation that other people must send years cleaning up the mess created by the early adopters on the basis of his half-written, barely-thought-out specifications. Atom cleans up his broken idea of RSS. SOAP was supposed to clean up XML-RPC although it made the situation worse… As Don says in the talk you referenced: “The whole world is living with the arbitrary decisions that Dave Winer made when he rolled out of bed that morning.”
http://www.kintespace.com/rasx37.html
Danja 09:54, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
That would be neat and anecdotal if 1) it wasn't just some random blog comment or 2) if the blog itself was perhaps even in the top 200,000 over at Technorati? Which it's not.Testerer 18:12, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- Yes, if only more people could come up with brilliant ideas and then code them in such perfect shape that nobody ever criticizes the work or wants to implement it differently. betsythedevine 11:42, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- In fact, if we match up the viewpoint that Dave is a brilliant but too-quirky creator whose ugly creations require major rescue-work -- against the viewpoint that Dave is nothing more than (to quote Danja) than "a contributor to several popular XML dialects", with the clear implication he played a major role in none of them -- isn't there some kind of contradiction here? betsythedevine 14:23, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I think there are definitely contradictions in the double speak. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Testerer (talk • contribs). 12 February 2007.
- If this were a normal Talk page, untroubled by furor, we would probably be discussing with User:Danja how to get more information about Paul Prescod's comment, reported in the page at kintespace.com that he referred to above . As it stands, there's nothing more we can do here, until we find out what 'broken ideas' in RSS (file format) Prescod feels have been cleaned up in Atom. If there are documented weaknesses in RSS, and they are described in reliable sources, we could discuss them. EdJohnston 18:20, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- It's entirely possible for the rivals and detractors of almost ANY software developer to make the argument cited here. I have personally heard this argument advanced against both Tim Berners-Lee (who contributed to the popular dialect known as the Web) and Ward Cunningham (who invented the wiki), not to mention Doug Engelbart and Ted Nelson, who invented hypertext. This is an absurd standard, impossible to meet. Just as, in retrospect, some aspects of the Web and the wiki might have been designed more cleverly or implemented with more grace and style, not all of Winer's designs were perfect. That they were important and influential is, I think, incontestable. MarkBernstein 19:25, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
EdJohnston, the issues with RSS 2.0 are well documented on the web (e.g. how should you treat markup in titles? No-one knows.) Mark - fair point. However I personally think the quote above is noteworthy, firstly because the views expressed were made on the public web, and secondly that Prescod and Box are highly respected figures in the Web/XML development community - Box having worked on SOAP alongside Winer. A bizarre aspect of the discussion here is that while Winer has been responsible for imaginative, hugely influential and original technical work - such as Frontier - there's an awful lot of effort going into inflating his technical role in developments like RSS where his contribution was primarily promotional. The quality of this entry really isn't going to improve while it's protected by the subject's friend and assorted (ill-informed) sycophants. Danja 00:13, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
- Assume good faith? Civility? MarkBernstein 16:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
- Danja, I agree that Dave's "promotional" contribution to RSS (over some 15+ years) outstrips his technical contribution to it--and everyone else's technical work on it also. Just about any stripped down system of tagging *could have* enabled the form-free content-repurposing that lets Robert Scoble read 10 million blogs per day. Even setting aside aggregators and ping-server search tools, how about convincing the NYT to let us bloggers create un-vanishing RSS links to their older content, previously all tucked away under pay-per-view? But that's my POV, and doesn't belong in the article, any more than your POV does.
- What I don't understand or agree with is the efforts by many to edit an article that's labeled "Dave Winer" so that, instead of describing Dave's contributions, it skimps them while naming all those who came before or after him. The biography of Albert Einstein, for example, doesn't include praise of Isaac Newton, Ernst Mach, or the Michelson-Morley Experiment. Surely it makes more sense to describe what Dave Winer did in this article, meanwhile referring people who want more history to articles such as History of podcasting or RSS (file format)#history? And those historical articles should indeed, I agree, contain a full and well-sourced account of the many people who made contributions to technical innovation as well as to those format's popularity.
- I am at peace with being called Dave Winer's friend (although it would be more telling if you could cite one of my edits that tries to inflate his bio as opposed to my edits aimed at deterring vandalism) but I doubt that the Wikipedians who have been outraged by Nirelan's antics are all "sycophants" of Dave Winer. betsythedevine 01:46, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
- Betsythedevine, it sounds like we're actually in agreement over something! This entry shouldn't be about RSS or podcasting or whatever, but Winer's contributions to the field. The problem I suppose is the tendency of people to focus on the technology (and look for a sole inventor), and it's easy to miss the persons actual contribution. While it would be accurate to say that Winer was the author of the RSS 2.0 spec and Einstein wrote a couple of pieces on relativity, their contributions to the respective fields is substantially different. There isn't any real innovation in XML-RPC or OPML, they're both just well-known ideas (RPC and outlines) expressed using a particular format/protocol (XML/HTTP). The ideas in RSS were well-established by the time Winer got hold of them. Even the technical aspects of podcasting don't represent any real creative input - if you trace back the history, you'll find Marc Canter begging Winer for tags to deliver media back in 1998 - and implementing that is a no-brainer in XML. But Winer has contributed significantly to the web, through Userland's applications and his clever evangelism, to the current generally easy-entry approach to content management and delivery. Would all this have happened without him? Probably, and it could be argued even quicker. But that's hypothetical, not historical. This is considerably more important than the markup he used. So while he didn't invent syndication or blogging (or outlines, or "the two-way web"), he has played an influential role. This should be acknowledged in this entry, along with his personal history. An accurate biographical piece wouldn't be complete without noting his gargantuan ego, eccentric and somewhat bipolar personality and the clashes that it's caused. Anyhow, I've got things I'd rather do than argue about someone's biography (it's remarkably easy to get sucked into this), so I'll leave this entry in your capable hands ;-) Danja 08:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
- The final sentence above is wildly and intrinsically unverifiable. There is no reason for the biography of a living computer scientist to discuss his personality, any more than Einstein's biography should discuss his cooking or his painting. MarkBernstein 16:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
- Ok, I accept the (penultimate) sentence is , but don't think my opinion is exceptional (Google is your friend). If Einstein's cooking or painting had a significant impact on his life and work, then I would expect them to be mentioned in his biography. Danja 16:48, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
Radio 8
Sometimes you can't argue with a picture.
From Yesterday's SN
"Here's a screen shot of the RSS enclosures prefs page from Radio 8. As you can see from the timestamp at the bottom of the page it was last modified on 11/24/2001. It was created some time before that. Adam Curry, who wrote iPodder, three years later, was an avid user of this software."
I know it is (for some reason) fun to go round and round with people you call "fanboys" over what Dave Winer did and didn't do. But just for a moment, let us ask ourselves; what if Dave was a part of this conversation? How easily would people try and discredit his work or diminish the roles he has played in Blogging, syndication and podcasting? I posted the quote and pic from yesterdays SN, because it's Dave Winer trying to help others fill in the gaps that they may have and perhaps answer some questions. It really is true, sometimes you can't argue with a picture.Testerer 18:12, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
- I rest my case. Danja 23:26, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
What Case? That we should consider what we write about real people, and how they perceive it's accuracy? I think we all know that you and Nirelan, if not the same person, seem to want to dicsredit and strip Dave Winer of any credit he might possibly deserve. We all are working on this article because, obviously we are interested in the subject matter, I'm not working on the wiki for tangerines because frankly I don't care. To criticize editors for being readers (which is what I think your point is) is absurd. Can I not fix information about the launch of Gizmodo because I'm a reader? I don't really even like that blog, it may be one of 300 feeds I subscribe to.
You rest your case? What case? That Radio 8 and the SS posted sorta proves that in 2001, Radio 8 used earlier versions of RSS w/ media enclosures to enable the automation that many associate with podcasting? Testerer 06:23, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
What Dave Winer's biography should and shouldn't say
I don't dispute that a product from Winer's company was able to do the automation that many associate with podcasting back in 2001. What I dispute is this being framed as "Dave invented podcasting". The use of the enclosure element in feeds is the implementation that became popular, and Radio 8's support obviously helped this - sure, both aspects involved Winer in a big way. But there were (are) many other ways of implementing the same functionality, and it wasn't until around 2004 that podcasting really took off. This suggests there were other factors involved. Winer's blog may not be the best place to look for reliable information on the topic as he tends to spin such things (e.g. his Dave-centric RSS history, his refusal to acknowledge that Ben Hammersley first coined the term "podcasting" - Hammersley being on Winer's paranoic "monsters" list). For what it's worth I'm not especially interested in the subject of this entry, but did spend around a year researching RSS and related technologies for a book. When I encountered this entry I noticed that not only was it inaccurate on many technical points, it also gave exclusive credit to Winer for developments which involved other contributors. I now attribute this to naive, unskeptical piping of material from Winer's blog by his followers - exactly as you appear to recommend. Danja 11:09, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
- Danja, this article does not say, did not say, and should not say "Dave invented podcasting". And although the NYT among others have referred to Dave as the "inventor" of RSS, I also think that's misleading. (And it's even more oversimplified and misleading when people claim that "Ramanathan V Guha invented RSS." )
- But if you look at the pre-Nirelan state of the article on January 23, it doesn't make either of those claims! It doesn't say Dave "invented" podcasting. It doesn't say Dave "invented" RSS. The only occurrence of the word "invented" is in a direct quote from Tim Bray, which Bray himself added: .
- There's an urban myth out there, like the myth that Al Gore claimed he invented the Internet , that Dave Winer claims he alone invented RSS, which Dave doesn't claim, and that Dave Winer claims that he alone invented podcasting, which he also doesn't claim. Does Dave get upset when people write about the history of these important technologies and imply that somebody else deserves all the credit? That's something entirely different, don't you agree?
- What I see as our problem here is that this article tries, as Misplaced Pages articles should, to describe the contributions of the person whose bio it is. I agree with Danja that piping the details in from his (or anybody's) blog would be a bad idea, but looking at the long history of this entry I doubt that's how it got written.
- I can appreciate that someone who comes to this article and expects a detailed account of the history of RSS or podcasting will feel this article is way too Dave-centric. I think we should find a more forceful way to send such readers off to the appropriate article where these things are discussed in depth.
- I can also appreciate that someone who comes to this article with the hope that this article will contain some juicy sneering at Dave Winer's "claims" to invent RSS and podcasting will be disappointed. I have less sympathy with that expectation. It's not what Misplaced Pages is or should be. betsythedevine 14:23, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Concerning the urban myth that Winer claims he invented RSS
Again Betsythedevine, I largely agree. But re. the urban myth, like many there is a basis in fact. Winer may not have made those claims explicitly himself (he has come close), but he'll link to other people making such statements, without offering any correction. What's more his own history of RSS begins with one of his formats, and on his blog sidebar he has a blatantly incorrect quote (from O'Reilly) which suggests the same. On the other hand he's quick to talk of credit when his name is left out. Incidentally, the current entry text here is such that anyone assuming he did invent RSS would keep that illusion. Danja 15:46, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
- "Incidentally, the current entry text here is such that anyone assuming he did invent RSS would keep that illusion." Er, well, anyone assuming that Dave invented RSS might kinda wonder why the entry doesn't claim he did. What would it take to satisfy you, Danja? A sentence like "Dave Winer is not the sole inventor of RSS, blogging, podcasting, the Internet, Web 2.0, sliced bread" ... wow, long sentence, now that we come to think of it.
- The urban myth that Dave claims he's the sole inventor of RSS is false. Dave claims (and others agree) that he was working on RSS and on similar stuff back in the late nineties. That claim is true. That claim is all that the quote from Tim O'Reilly is meant to suggest. That claim is not adequate grounds for the kind of loud-mouthed meanness that keeps getting showered on Dave by people who believe the urban myth that Dave claims full credit for RSS and podcasting. betsythedevine 16:48, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
One last counterexample to the statement that Dave "comes close" to making claims about his role by quoting and linking to excessive praise by others: here's a very juicy example of the NY Times referring to Dave Winer in 2004 as "the inventor of R.S.S." . Now look at the sidebar of Dave's blog and notice that Dave does not quote that statement in the NY Times nor does he link to it. But if he's trying to establish such a claim through the words of others, then why not quote those words in the NY Times itself? Answer: the urban myth that "Dave Winer claims he invented RSS" gets passed around and re-justified when it flunks a serious truth test by people who heard it from people who heard it from people who have the same kinds of motivations as the guys who passed around "Al Gore claims he invented the Internet". betsythedevine 15:00, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
- Betsythedevine, while that particular quote might not appear in Winer's sidebar, he certainly did link to it: and what's more he thanked the NYT specifically for the "inventor of R.S.S." line : !!. Did Al Gore create such screenshots? Danja 09:17, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Concerning the POV and accuracy of differing histories of RSS
In his comment above, Danja refers to a posting by Dave as a 'Dave-centric RSS history'. This might be read as claiming that Dave overstates his own role in the creation of RSS. If you read the cited posting, it's hard to get anything like that. Every item in the list appears to be a bald statement of fact about the appearance of certain specifications. Perhaps there are other facts that could also be added to the list, but the ones listed there seem innocent enough, unless you have a reason to think some of them aren't correct. EdJohnston 18:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
- EdJohnston, my point is not that Winer's list isn't factual*, it's that it's selective and misleading : if that is the history of RSS, then RSS began with <scriptingNews> format. Compare with this history. (* although his remarks about the "RDF header" are fairly nonsensical - that isn't how XML namespaces or RDF/XML work). Danja 22:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Danja, I looked over the new link to goatee.net that you provided above. It's hard to get anything dramatically different out of that link. I did not find myself changing my opinion very much. Curiously, the nuances of the specification stuff (and the truth about who proposed what) are actually interesting, but it's hard to sell that kind of thing as a meaningful addition to any current articles. For example, the RSS article (to which I've made some contributions) has Winer-related items, and is reasonably fair so far as I can tell, but exactly 'who-invented-what' is hardly important to an actual reader of the RSS article. They would mostly care if there were leftover ideas from the 1990s that would be truly beneficial today, and it's not clear that there any such ideas. Do you want to propose a History of RSS article?
Trolls and this Article
I think that the large group of us who've been recently working on this article have done a fine job dealing with a prolonged editing war, extended, archived discussions, and wild unreferenced allegations. We've encountered many unfounded arguments that could not even be categorized as conjecture as well as dealing with trolls and we've all been very patient. Yet this article is still in bad shape thanks to a few people who'd rather stymie rational, referenced improvement to this article than offer up any real counterpoints that would bolster their argument. When can we get on with improving this article and put aside the obtrusive and get on with the progressive. If someone wants to write a History of RSS article, do it, it will probably be merged with the main article in due time. And bogus claims made within the article or section will surely be deleted by responsible people. If you make wild claims like, Kevin Marks invented Podcasting at Bloggercon in 2003 or say that in RSS, media enclosures are no big deal because they've long since been a part of other Markup languages then that too will be deleted. If you'd rather speculate on the importance of this or to what extent someone invented a part of something, you will invariably attract some people, not unlike myself, who will take you seriously enough to discuss things to no end, but after a while they'll too get the idea that some people are just trolling, for what reason does not matter.
If someone would like to say Dave Winer came "close" to saying bla bla bla, I say to them, almost saying something doesn't count. In fact, saying someone came "close" to saying something is a rather asinine argument. At the risk of sounding heavy handed, what must we all do, the logical majority that is, to "get on with it"? Thanks to all those who've spent countless hours being patient and discussing this to such an extent that glue factories all over world are beaming at the horses being sent their way. I really think its a simple matter of a few trolls. So how can we leap over this hurdle and progress? Testerer 05:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
- Tester, the "close" sentence I included parenthetically, it had little bearing on my main argument. I don't personally think Kevin Marks invented Podcasting at Bloggercon in 2003 or that media enclosures in RSS are no big deal, but nor do I think these are "wild ideas". If you define podcasting as the full chain right down to the iPod, then Kevin Marks probably did implement first. If you consider media enclosures in RSS solely from a technical pov, then they are fairly trivial. If you want to "get on with it" then find some fresh material that sheds more light on the subject, or offer some text that is likely to get consensus support. (Funny you should mention the word troll, I get a strong feeling I'm feeding one right now). Danja 14:27, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Separate "History of RSS" article
I think your suggestion of a "History of RSS" article is excellent. There already exists a separate History of podcasting article, as a way of separating out the "who gets credit for what when" arguments that interest only a tiny number of people from information that interests a lot more people. Because the tiny number of people who care about who gets credit really do care about it a lot--and understandably so. Or maybe those sections should have names like "invention of RSS" or "early history of RSS"? By the way, this Dave Winer article could use more detailed info about his RSS role. betsythedevine 13:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Update--I created an article for History of web syndication technology and re-directed History of RSS there. I then moved a bunch of stuff from the RSS and Atom articles there. I'm going to go back to those articles now and try to put a summary of their history there with a link to the history page for more details. I don't look forward to getting flamed for this, but I see it as a way to improve the articles. betsythedevine 14:02, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Brave move! It is likely to be a battlefield, but at least it should help decouple the controversial stuff from entries such as this one. (btw, it does seem rather format-oriented, I haven't time myself, but it might be worth looking into other use of polling over HTTP, i.e. the protocol side of RSS). Danja 14:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Inventors
Since you still have technologies that Dave did not invent under the word "created" in the lead paragraph, I am going to add the inventors names once again. --Nirelan
- Footnote--soon after leaving this comment, and reverting the text of Dave Winer three times to reflect his earlier edits, Nirelan was blocked indefinitely for his edit-warring on this article. betsythedevine 15:06, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Enclosures
Tristan Louis created enclosures. That means Dave wasn't the first to implement them. -- Nirelan
- Tristan Louis *suggested* using a tag called "sound" to link to a sound file. I don't think many people would agree with you that this hypothetical suggestion of something named X means he has to get credit for "creating" something similar named Y. To "implement" something is to put it into practical effect. This is what Dave Winer did when he added a tag called "enclosure" to his RSS and made it possible for his company's blogware and aggregator to recognize therein a link to (among other types of files) a sound file. betsythedevine 00:19, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
"- Using special "sound" and "video" tags in RSS Feeds to link to specific file types was proposed in 2000 in a draft by Tristan Louis. "- Prove that Dave implemented them before that. -- Nirelan
- The article does not say that Dave Winer implemented enclosure tags before Tristan Louis proposed sound tags.
- To propose something in a draft is different from implementing that something. It is even more different from implementing something that somewhat resembles something you proposed. Tristan Louis proposed sound tags--he did not implement sound tags. He did not propose, or implement, enclosure tags. Dave Winer implemented enclosure tags. That's what the article says, and it's the truth. Please stop deleting it. betsythedevine 00:43, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
- I don't think Nirelan is justified in deleting the sentence on the grounds of Tristan Louis's suggestion. Nor do I think it makes much sense to call the decision to use a particular XML element implementing it - hey, I just <implemented> the implemented tag! It does seem pretty certain that Winer's company was the first to implement an automatic download feature using that element in RSS 2.0. That is the way the majority of podcasts are delivered today. I personally have my doubts about the significance of that implementation, it happened a long time before podcasting took off, it's not particularly innovative technically and the idea of delayed downloads via feeds was attributed by Winer to Adam Curry (before they fell out). But Winer did play a big role in the podcasting buzz, and perhaps the current sentence isn't such a bad way of giving him some credit. I'd rather see it more technically accurate - "necessary ingredients" isn't true, it's more of a convenience. But "first to implement the 'enclosure' feature" in itself isn't bad. Danja 23:52, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
- Danja, I'm glad to see you distinguishing your ideas from the vandalism of Nirelan. But --if you took your <implemented> tag and added it to some dialect of RSS, some brand of blogware, some brand of aggregator--went on beyond that to publicize its usefulness so more folks would adopt it--as Winer and Userland did all of this with the <enclosures> tag--then, I would agree you had implemented the tag. To stick a word between angle brackets is not the same as to put a new tag into "practical effect."
- Yes, all the <enclosure> stuff happened long before podcasting took off. And all the CDF/RDF stuff happened long before RSS took off. Let's give people credit for the stuff they did in each case, without trying to deprive others who did other stuff of the credit for what they did before or afterward. Now, if somebody out there wants to ask stupid questions, like "But who deserves all the credit for RSS/podcasting/blogging/whatever?" Well, god help us all, because no matter what you say to them, they will hear some over-simple answer if that's all they are listening for.
- My very lovable and good-natured husband Frank Wilczek is a physicist who is not and never has been feuding with anyone, AFAIK. Yet sometimes after a reporter interviews Frank, although Frank was enthusiastically trying to answer questions about the stuff he works on, the reporter goes on to publish something like "Frank Wilczek, who invented quarks and gluons...", stuff that had been developed by people Frank much admires back when he was just starting off in grad school, because some reporters just assume that if the subject talks about X, the subject must be claiming to have invented X.betsythedevine 01:12, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Betsythedevine, I take your point entirely about reporters getting the wrong end of the stick, simplifying stories and making mistaken attributions. But this is significantly different than an individual purposefully exaggerating their own work. Another Winer example: back in 1999 he claimed to have invented the collapsing-outline UI paradigm. Curiously in that piece he mentions Doug Engelbart in passing, who is generally credited with the invention some decades before. It might have been possible to put this claim to a simple mistake, Winer not having known about the previous work, had he not said elsewhere that he had been familiar with Engelbart's work at least since the 1970's. In more recent documents, Winer does give considerable credit to Engelbart, for example in this piece. However even that contains an exaggerated claim: "Frontier brought outlining to programming in the early 90s, with a script editor that worked with code in an outliner.". But the well-known (Lisp-based) emacs editor, popular amongst programmers, has had that facility apparently since 1978, and what's more Winer had already acknowledged prior art around Lisp elsewhere. As I suggested earlier, Dave Winer probably isn't the most reliable source of information on his own contributions. Danja 10:13, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
Outlining
Immediately above, Danja discusses Dave Winer's role in outling, citing it as evidence that Winer chronically exaggerates his work.
As it happens, I have some knowledge of the history of outlining. I've known Engelbart and Nelson since 1987, I've worked with and written about Engelbart's NLS/AUGMENT as well as Winer's MORE, and I've managed products that competed directly with both. I'm also familiar with lots of other pertinent work in and around outliners in this era and with their creators: GUIDE (Peter Brown), TIES (Ben Shneiderman, Alan Borning), Xanadu (Ted Nelson), Boxer (Andy di Sessa), Gateway (Rosemary Simpson), Symbolics Document Examiner (Janet Walker), NoteCards (Halasz and Trigg) come quicky to mind for the 1980's.
There is absolutely no question in my mind that Winer's claim is reasonable. Engelbart's NLS is a monument, but in the late 1980's and early 1990's it was also a decayed monument, a fascinating and powerful early timesharing system that had inspired a generation of researchers -- the people now known as 'hypertext pioneers' -- but that had almost no progeny outside the laboratory and would clearly die with the PDP-10. NLS/AUGMENT was a collaborative, distributed hypertext system that possessed -- among MANY other things -- an ellision mechanism that anticipates the modern outliner. Winer's ThinkTank/MORE was a personal text processor for editing outlines (which subsequently accreted presentation tools). It was widely used, and has always had progeny. (The contemporary stretchtext solution, Peter Brown's GUIDE, packages the same tradition differently. Ted Goranson, incidentally, has published a superb, nearly book-length, review of outliners in serial form in ATPM.) There was lots of relevant work: Winer turned that work into a product. There were other products with ellision: the ones we recognize as 'normal' outliners are closer to Winer than to any of the others.
Danja's EMACS objection is easily dealt with. Stallman's original EMACS paper was, when it appeared, a brilliant and surprising effort that turned programming inside out. Instead of designing an ideal editor with optimal instructions and interface, Stallman showed that you could achieve DiSessa's vision of software that users could reconfigure to work the way they wanted, on the fly. It was a stunning demonstration and has been immensely influential. As a result, EMACS became a lot of things -- including (bizarrely at the time) a programming language. And that programming language did offer an ellision mechanism, which anticipates Frontier. You can see similar work in InterLISP editors of the period. The Smalltalk-80 browser is aiming at the same target with the same tools (and with a bigger UI budget).
Frontier, on the other hand, was (originally) a scripting environment, a replacement for the shell that was developed because the original Macintosh had no shell and people needed to do things for which DOS users used simple scripts. Outline editing had been a lab curiousity for years, a cute mode in some esoteric editors and some ambitious education systems; Winer put it at the heart of a shipping mass-market product. He took an idea that made people in the computer science education community scratch their heads (this was a *keynote* at IJCAI in 85 or 86 -- the one at UCLA) and put it into a software environment for casual computing. Frontier took stuff out of the lab and shipped it: that, in software engineering, is called "first to market". It's an achievement.
Danja, Nirelan, and all: let it be. The world is filled with people who do hard work. The endless sniping and derisory snipping that has characterized the entire discussion here is perfused with rancour and ill will toward the subject, with a hostily that has spilled at times onto those who are unwilling to join the chorus of detractors. Historians know that we can always find precedents: the hard part is recognizing what people achieve rather than in enumerating the limits of that achievement. A generous spirit should be looking for ways to acknowledge and reward work, rather constantly seeking reasons to minimize and diminish. A scholarly spirit would identify the individual's unique contribution rather than striving to shift each achievement to someone -- anyone -- else. Nothing is at stake here for you, save perhaps some tokens of respect for a colleague of whom you seem not to be overly fond. Let's have malice toward none, charity for all, and finish the work we are in: to explain who Winer is and appreciate what he has designed and built. MarkBernstein 17:02, 19 February 2007 (UTC)
- "Podcasting: The latest buzz", ITworld.com, October 27, 2004. Retrieved on 2007-01-25.
- Louis, Tristan, 2000-10-13. Suggestion for RSS 0.92 specification
- Curry, Adam, 2000-10-27 The Bandwidth Issue; server discontinued by Userland, late 2005.
- Winer, Dave, 2000-12-25 RSS 0.92 Specification
- Winer, Dave, 2000-12-27 Scripting News: Heads-up, I'm working on new features for RSS that build on 0.91. Calling it 0.92...
- Winer, Dave, 2000-10-31 Virtual Bandwidth; and 2001-01-11 Payloads for RSS.
- Winer, Dave, 2001-01-11 Scripting News: Tonight's song on the Grateful Dead audio weblog is Truckin...
- http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/dave/cv
- http://validator.opml.org/
- http://www.opml.org/2006/03/04#a278
- http://validator.opml.org/