It seems to have something to do with the fact that RSS isn't very good for doing anything more complicated than it was designed for. It might also be about how people are too stupid to generate valid RSS documents. Or both. Hello? If you want a super-whizbang meta-format that will be adaptable enough to meet all of your quirks, use RSS 1.0 and write a module if it doesn't already do what you want it to. Just please shut up about it, already. RSS is just like tables before the magical world of cascading style sheets that have ushered in a brave new world of Right Thing-edness...when they work. RSS is simple to grok, simple to implement and yeilds tangible results because no one has ever bothered to check for anything other than well-formedness. (<![CDATA[]]> tags make pretty short work of that, as it is...) Deal with it, folks : RSS got hijacked by the street and starting a re-education campaign is a waste of time.