Tracker: "Bloat"
Well, we do have a tracker system;
now that I got flexinode/table up-n-running you can sort-by-rank nicely in there :)
I'm looking to complementing this in a taxonomybrowser fashion too - but that's just theory ATM :-P

RSS:
drupal supports rss, though I don't know if our installation requires fixing in that area;
anyway - I agree - it would prolly also lighten the load on the webserver considerably,
since I often find myself just repeatedly reloading /tracker myself.