tag proposal: <podcast:popular>

[daveajones]

This could be seen as the ying to the <podcast:gateway>'s yang. Whereas a gateway list allows the podcaster to specify which episodes a listener should start with, this tag would allow that information to be gleaned from actual listeners by way of host supplied download metrics.

The structure would look like this:

<podcast:popular
  updated="[datestamp of when this tag last refreshed]"
>
[a list of <guid> elements]
</podcast:popular>

Channel

(optional | single)

The node value of this tag should be a list of <guid> elements that reference the most popular episodes in descending order from most to least popular. The updated attribute should be an RSS standard datestamp of the time this tag's content was last recalculated. There is no limit on the number of <guid> elements that can be present, but it's suggested to keep it to five or fewer since apps will likely limit it anyway for sane UI behavior.

Example:

<podcast:popular updated="Fri, 08 Oct 2021 18:55:32 +0000">
    <guid>https://example.com/pc20/ep143</guid>
    <guid>https://example.com/pc20/ep66</guid>
    <guid>https://example.com/pc20/ep292</guid>
</podcast:popular>

[theDanielJLewis]

I think this, too, could be handled better with the better label of <podcast:featured>. "Gateway" just has such bad connotations, and "popular" seems redundant. "Featured" can handle both of these and more.

[daveajones]

The idea is that this would be a hosting company supplied tag to show apps what the most popular episodes are. Popular made sense to me, or "trending"?

[staceygoers]

Do we have tags that aren't controlled manually by the podcast publisher/creator themselves, but are influenced by performance or something outside of the straight publishing flow? This seems like something that could suddenly change on the podcaster in a way they may not want (some episode goes viral, etc), and they have to play catchup/adjust/remove the tag, as they might not want to have that episode at the top -- it might be really old, for example, or feature a co-host that has left.

What are the negative connotations with gateway? Honest question!

[daveajones]

Right now there is a proposal for this tag which is hosting company driven by an algorithm internal to the host and the podcast:gateway tag which is chosen by the creator/podcaster. Kind of both sides of the issue being represented. I guess both could exist since they really do give two nice sets of info.

[picard102]

Seems like it could be a disadvantage for podcasters who's hosting is seperate from their feed infrastructure.
I guess they could add this information manually, but that kind of defeats the stated intent of this tag then.

[staceygoers]

I support podcast:featured and let the podcaster/hosting company implement how they want. Let the podcaster manually choose? Let it be programmatic? It's a nice open tag that I could see get high adoption in the industry.

[staceygoers]

Is there a proposal for podcast:featured separate from this thread?

[theDanielJLewis]

No. It's more an idea to merge existing proposals into a more versatile and future-friendly single tag.