Proposal: <podcast:contact>

[theDanielJLewis]

I would love to see more podcasts and apps reduce the number of steps someone takes to send feedback to the podcast.

This would be either confidential feedback or something longer for future episodes. Thus, it would be a response beyond the social of <podcast:socielInteract>.

I propose the <podcast:contact> tag with attributes to indicate the contact method and purpose. This would be similar to how a domain can have multiple contacts for different purposes.

Attributes:

• method (required) indicates the method of contact from a list:
  • phone for phone numbers
  • email for email addresses
  • recording for recorded voice or video
  • multi (or maybe letting this be optional and omitting this attribute) for a single destination with multiple methods
• purpose indicates the purpose for the listed contact method, which can trigger whether or how the method is exposed in the listening app:
  • feedback is for the audience to send feedback to the podcaster
  • press is for press inquiries
  • booking is for booking the podcast host(s) as guest(s), or for requesting to be interviewed on the podcast
  • sponsor is for advertising/sponsorship opportunities
  • omitted would be the default to indicate all of the above

(I wanted to avoid the attribute of type because its meaning could be ambiguous in this case. Like it could be thought to mean either a phone number as a type, or feedback for the podcast as a type.)

Example:

<podcast:contact method="phone">555-555-5555</podcast:contact>
<podcast:contact method="email" purpose="feedback">feedback@myawesomepodcast.com</podcast:contact>
<podcast:contact method="multi">https://myawesomepodcast.com/contact</podcast:contact>

A podcast app could parse a feedback email address and trigger the operating system's default email app, possibly even prepopulating the subject line. For example, if the contact button was clicked/tapped from an episode, include that episode's title in the email subject line.

Building on this app-level idea, we could consider a subject attribute for any email method, allowing the tag to repopulate the subject line, which would be most useful for episode-specific feedback.

[theDanielJLewis]

Doh! I just realized something similar has already been proposed in #245.