Note by @fastfinge

Reading the RSS 2.0 specification and found this: "The purpose of the <textInput> element is something of a mystery. You can use it to specify a search engine box. Or to allow a reader to provide feedback. Most aggregators ignore it."

This, right here, back in 2002, was when the web went wrong. We don't know what it's for or why it exists, and everybody ignores it, but it's part of the standard anyway!

Also, bonus fun: RSS 0.9 claims to be RDF but isn't, RSS 1.0 really is RDF but is incompatible with RSS 0.9, RSS 2.0 is incompatible with all of the above, and Atom is the modern W3C format that is incompatible with everything else and nobody uses. And everyone wonders why normal people don't use RSS.

I learned all this because I wondered why my static website generator wants to produce feed.rss, feed.rdf, and feed.atom.