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SOAP is not a clarified, less-ambiguous, consistent standard developed from REST for the same role. (Heck, they aren't even the same class of thing -- SOAP is a protocol, REST is an architectural style. And SOAP is signficantly older than REST.)

RSS:Atom might, arguably. be very loosely analogous to Markdown :: Common Markdown.

I think the key one here is "XHTML:HTML". Like HTML markdown offloads the responsibility onto the parser writer to figure out what was intended. So while I sympathize with Github and Stack Overflow, as a user it should just work. And usually does.

Do people use RSS anymore? All the stuff I use is Atom.

Answering my own question: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard)#Barriers_to_ado...

Sad.

I have 54 feeds in NewsBlur and only 3 of them are Atom.