I don’t feel it’s fair to say that about Atom. RSS, sure; it’s a total disaster. And that’s kinda why Atom was made, and it seems to me to do a good job.
So given that, any chance you could elucidate on fault you find with Atom?
Yes, you are right, most of my grievances were against RSS - either old RDF, or RSS 2.0, or perhaps against Atom 0.3, which was not all that common before much better Atom 1.0 took over.
Still, I vaguely recall that there was at least one vagueness in the Atom 1.0 spec that I found abused in a real world feed, but can't for the life of me remember it - it's been a while.
So given that, any chance you could elucidate on fault you find with Atom?