Really Simple Social Action (RSSA)

I've been thinking about the similarities and difference between syndication and social action.

Feedbacks 

Syndication solves a one-way information subscription problem. Publishers package information into feeds for aggregators to consume.

Social action demands a two-way activity collaboration problem. Doers report actions into feedbacks which produces an aggregate feed of all actions taken. Doers can act collaboratively by initiating new actions, imitating others, and refining methods.

The feedback process requires not only a passive .rss file for consumers to read via HTTP. Feedback requires an equally ubiquitous mechanism for doers to submit actions into the feedback .rssa. The .rssa must describe not only how to read its nodes, but also how to submit new ones.

The RSSA Server

There is a server component to running an RSSA feed above and beyond the creation of filesL Just like bittorrent, even P2P clients depend on trackers to manage feeds. A server must listen for feedback submissions and update the .rssa file dynamically.

This server component should be a simple open-source package that can be implemented in a variety of languages and methods so that application developers can integrate RSSA functionality.

It must also provide a solid baseline standard of functionality so that interoperability and reliability is not hampered by a lack of consistency.

Filtering

The RSSA server should be able to provide customized .rssa feeds for a variety of filter criteria. The "query language" to describe these filters should be simple enough to be part of the URL, and complex saved queries should be able to have aliases that shorten their URLs.

For example, an RSSA feedback starts for people campaigning to save Internet radio on www.savenetradio.org. Some people start calling senators, others start writing letters to newspapers. Writers and callers need both their own filtered feedbacks and the combined master feedback.

Nodes

The posts themselves that comprise a feedback are called nodes and work similarly to nodes in drupal. They can have different node types with different properties. Some nodes are types of actions that are proposed and anyone can "reply" by taking that action themselves and reporting their activity. Other nodes are just conventional information-only nodes until someone replies to them with a proposed activity like disseminating that information in a targeted way.