Existing RSS 2.0 features I'd like to see blogging systems support.
First I'd like for the systems to support the <category> element. I've blogged about this a number of times and a taxonomy for organizing entries on a grander scale than by feed is definitely needed. I know I post up to 3 items a day at times and with the blogs I read I have to parse through about 60 different feeds reading 1 or 2 posts per feed. This can be a real pain in the butt. Further, I don't know what the feeds are going to be about, so as I read them, if I like them, I have to categorize and move them around myself. That just isn't right.
The <category> element is made to be used at both the <channel> and <item> level. This is nice. It means I can use a general taxonomy (such as a global set of categories defined by the site hosting my blog) for my channel that will enable users of the aggregation site to properly position my feed. Each <channel> has an optional domain attribute that allows easy separation of who or what entity is defining my categories. For my own blog the categories might be defined using a domain for the root url to my blog. The weblogs categories would of course be defined with a domain set to weblogs.asp.net...
Hell, I make sure to properly categorize my blog entires so I can find them myself. In fact I would say I was meticulous about it. I think many users would be interested in making use of my own categorization and if there was a global categorization I would take advantage of that as well to make sure that people could properly index my content within their aggregators. Blogs are quickly becoming resources, and while it is nice to go find the entries through something like Google, it is even more nice when I'm running unwired and can quickly and easily search a database of technical content.
I'm only beating this dead horse because there is an EXISTING feature of RSS 2.0 that makes it possible. You could say none of the aggregators support the feature, but mine does and that is good enough for me. Make the feature widely available in some popular feeds and the aggregation software will follow.
Okay, the next feature is the <enclosure> element. Anyone think it is extremely retarded to have a linkage system and a use case scenario related to that system for delayed and background downloads and still not take advantage of it? The <enclosure> element simply links to some other content. It wants you to give a content length, and that makes it not so useful for more dynamic content or content you plan on changing, but it is simply a guideline to be used for scheduling download of the content. You can specify a mime-type as well. You could easily link HTML documents, audio/video content which was the original design of the feature, power point decks, zip files, project files for a buildable solution, and source files for sample programs.
I consider linked content really important. As it is, I have to embed all of my links within the content of my entry. An aggregator could go out and cache those items if it were so inclined (actually I should add that to mine), but it can't tell the difference between linked items and links. They really are different. A linked item might be a sample file or zip of a project system while a link might be a URL that does a search on google. Wouldn't want the search results to be cached by the aggregator. The <enclosure> item also implies features for scheduling the caching of an item. In fact, enclosures could be added to a list and I could select and then schedule each item based on the information provided (like content-length).
Thats my RSS gripe for the day/week/month... You can always say, do something about it. I actually have a number of extensions and quite a few RSS sample applications, but the general practice with something as widely used and available as RSS is to leave it alone for fear of breaking it or making it complex beyond necessity. Many great extensions exist that haven't gotten the time of day. I've recently added photo-album support to my own aggregator and I have to say it is one of the most feature rich extensions I've seen but is so infrequently used that few popular aggregators support it.