"It would be a lot better to create some XML encapsulation of what the front page of the NYT does in terms of curatorial importance."
RSS would be a critical tool for anyone trying to solve that problem.
A lot of the complaints here are that RSS isn't what RSS isn't. OK, that's great, but those are more "entrepreneurial opportunities" than problems with RSS. Toss out RSS (and I assume by extension Atom and all similar friends) and those opportunities recede, they recede a lot, they don't get better. It is what it is and it has always been designed from day one to be a foundational infrastructure on top of which to build more things, not the Final Answer To All Problems.
The NYT front page, while changing day-to-day still has a layout that embodies importance. There needs to be some sort of semantic interpretation of how important something is other than h1’s. How do we replicate the 144pt super-important headings while removing presentation from content?
The web was built for rationalist minds and papers, and the separation of html elements furthers this goal, yet hampers any sort of human-ness of communication.
RSS is great for a blog, but bad for newspapers. Check out NYT’s RSS feed. Every article ticks in at an equal level of importance and requires the viewer’s mental acuity to discern what’s #1. Not so with their web-front or printed sheet.
Syndication, while essential, needs to be extended.
It also has to be some sort of project that uses RSS, not something built into an RSS-replacement. It requires some sort of third-party interaction with your input to determine "importance". Leave it to the New York Times and at best their decisions about importance merely won't match yours; at worse they'll simply label everything "important", sort of like the way my HR department seems to reflexively tick that box in Outlook regardless of whether open enrollment is about to close or somebody's parking job is a bit off and could they please correct it?
You bring up a good point, importance is a human attribution to information, and a lot of people are either stupid or self-important. Impartial judgement is important, but NPR's music segments demonstrate that trending topics are middling and not truly important.
If the curator is strictly online popularity, news sites invariably turn into people magazine. You need some high-and-mighty news nerd to determine what's truly important. Sure, the curator's occasionally wrong or late, but it's a lot better than pointless water-cooler talk.
RSS would be a critical tool for anyone trying to solve that problem.
A lot of the complaints here are that RSS isn't what RSS isn't. OK, that's great, but those are more "entrepreneurial opportunities" than problems with RSS. Toss out RSS (and I assume by extension Atom and all similar friends) and those opportunities recede, they recede a lot, they don't get better. It is what it is and it has always been designed from day one to be a foundational infrastructure on top of which to build more things, not the Final Answer To All Problems.