Recovered from the Wayback Machine.
I can see that others have added some input to the short form, long form, RSS debate, including our own Mike Sanders, Meryl Yourish, and dare I say community newcomer, Will Leshner, as well as Dave (of course), and Jon Udell.
I think in some ways, Jon, you and I will probably never agree on the importance of RSS, because you see weblogs as a source of information, and RSS enables this. I see weblogs as part of my community, interconnecting with other communities through links related to stories, or meeting within comments or even blogrolls. Your approach is automation, my approach is less efficient, but effective for me.
Ultimately in the end, as Meryl eloquently puts it, there is no right or wrong way to write a weblog. And RSS is just an associated technology — nothing more, nothing less.