Happening across an article called “RSS Anxiety Disorder” today, I couldn’t help but chuckle. Come on, anxiety about an XML format? Then again, the stink on rss-public has gotten a little crazy at times.

This whole idea of an RSS Anxiety Disorder has started to make me a little nervous. What if I have it? What if I’m just one partial-text description away from a complete meltdown?

So, using scientific research and comprehensive questionnaires*, I have compiled the following checklist to help you discover your risk for this debilitating disorder:

1. Is your self-esteem linked to the results of feedvalidator.org?
2. Do you ever worry about starting a flamewar with Dave Winer?
3. Do you check your FeedBurner stats more than once a day?
4. Have you fought with your spouse over whether full-text feeds can be monetized?
5. Do you ever feel that you are being stalked by Atom zealots?
6. Have you actually tried any of Guy’s ideas on sucking up to an A-List blogger?
7. To calm yourself while making a public speech, have you ever imagined Robert Scoble or Shel Israel in the audience, naked?
8. Have you ever had a nightmare where you so irritated an RSS Board member that they resigned?
9. Have you ever read through a checklist on whether you have RSS Anxiety Disorder?

Now, tally your results…

• You answered “No” to all questions: Congratulations. You neither have RSS Anxiety Disorder, nor do you know what RSS is. However, you wasted 2 minutes of your life reading something that is neither funny nor interesting to you. You’re not anxious, you’re just bored. Here, look at the funny enema picture. Ha ha!
• You answered “Yes” to 1 or 2 questions: You’re probably safe, for now. Have an uneasy laugh at this whole business, and go back to reading the RSS Blog.
• You answered “Yes” to 3-5 questions: You may already be making bad choices. If you are single, your love life is probably in serious trouble. (Unless you’re female, and pretty, and work for Google.)
• You answered “Yes” to 6 or more questions: Therapy awaits. I bet you think this blog is about you. **

* This is a bold-faced lie.
** This is probably true.
*** This is never actually used.

Flickr images by mfcrisp, gweedo, and jessamyn

For a myriad of reasons, the specification for RSS has been either too loose or too constipated, depending on your point of view. The frustrations around what is valid or not valid in RSS have caused many tempests in the syndication teacup over the years. It even led a group of people to create the Atom specification.

The de-facto owner of RSS 2.0 has long been Dave Winer. Officially it belongs to Harvard Law and is steered by the RSS Advisory Board, but typically Winer is the guy people either listen to or point fingers at. This had made for entertaining flame wars at times, but the specification itself hasn’t seen much benefit.

Long overdue, I believe, has been public discussion on how to improve RSS and clean out the harmful wastes and toxins.

Despite a recent flurry of mixed messages about who controls what (see Dave Johnson’s link compilation), there is now a public discussion underway on clarifying the RSS specification. From one contributer:

“The goal is to… address the unclear aspects of RSS that aren’t clearly specified, like whether item description is the only RSS element that can carry HTML.”

You can observe the board’s discussions on this Yahoo forum, or participate in public discussion on the public forum.

(Ironically, the RSS feeds for these forums only include partial text descriptions, which is really irritating, and considered by most to be an RSS Worst Practice. An inflamed polyp, if you will.)

So, get out the warm saline of thoughtful discussion, and jump right in. It is going to be messy, but I think we’ll all benefit in the end.

Update Feb 22, 2006:

The enema may be too uncomfortable after all:

Dave Winer said: “And with that, I am banging the gavel and ending this experiment … Tomorrow I will talk individualy with all the corporate members of the “board” and ask them to resign … I may at some time send [Rogers] a bill for all of my time that he is wasting.