And, though it’s gotten some mileage through Dave’s sheer exuberance and people infected by his cool ideas, it’s never quite caught on. Instead, things like wikis and JotSpotLive and Backpack and SubEthaEdit have been capturing the users.

And now, this latest push doesn’t look so much like shared outlining per se, but more like a new attempt at DMOZ. And since Google’s pretty much driven a stake into DMOZ, my further interest in Gopher NG is really just a sometimes-interesting problem.

I could see some people joining Dave’s World Outline effort to get some buzz in their interest niches—trying to be first to get their constituent URLs placed in the new, distributed OPML DMOZ-killer. And it might be nifty for awhile, but I doubt it’ll take hold.

But as for real world examples of shared outlining, in the particular form Dave’s pushing right now… Look at just about anyone’s blogroll. They’re almost all in XOXO form right now. That’s the thing: XOXO is just an HTML list. It’s so unexciting as to be unremarkable—but they’re everywhere, right now. Hell, even OPML has to get converted to XOXO to be used with web browsers—unless you’re falling back to some ugly form of tables-as-list.

XOXO is actually the simplest thing that can possibly work, and people are using and have been using it all along. I think that’s the right thing to bet on, versus OPML. It doesn’t need any evangelism or adoption efforts, other than maybe to remind people of that what they’re already using is itself a viable format. That’s the only reason XOXO has a name.

I’ve already shown an in-browser XOXO editor prototype—and believe me, that was easier to implement reliably than anything I’ve tried with OPML. I could turn that into a full flown app given sustained free time and interest. I plan to do that eventually, with a project I’ve got simmering.

Will I do it? Who knows—I’m a busy nerd, and I certainly don’t have the constant ebulience, time, and money that Dave Winer has. All I can do is call shenanigans and preach to the choir.

When group 2 people ask for working code, they aren’t asking simply for “working code”. (Such as your XOXO & XSL thing) They’re thinking of an entire system of real users, a real application (need / problem to be solved) etc.

The reason Dave Winer and OPML will win this, is because Winer really wants shared outlining on the internet. And he knows “why” he wants it. He has a vision, and a passion for it. He knows what he wants to do with it. He knows how to make interesting applications with like-minded collaborators.

You can come up with a “better” format than OPML. You might be able to knock off better code overnight. But you do it for a “lark” or for some principle of “doing it properly”.

Winer doesn’t care if its “crappy”. He just has a drive to make something happen, and OPML is the simplest thing that can possibly work to do that.

I think that’s exactly the right thing to bet on.

When you say “I’ve become convinced that what group #1 does is best over the long term, as some of the early successes of group #2 may become tottering unbalanced stacks of plates later on.”

I’d be interested in some real world examples. As I see it, “worse is better” is the golden rule of computer history, in the long as well as short term.

And finally, I’d love to see an OPML browser app written in PHP. Perhaps I’ll write one.

What’s intensely irritating is the egos involved who can’t see the truth in the above statement. It should be possible to criticise OPML as a standard while still applauding the experiments and without necessarily offering an alternative. If done with respect, just the criticism on its own should move the debate onwards.