Heartlessly Endorsed

I suppose there must be a special hell for people who don't take their LinkedIn accounts seriously, and if so I'm headed there full steam. Still, you can imagine my horror when I noticed in the latest missive from LinkedIn (just as I was going to delete it) that several of my acquaintances have endorsed me for my XML skills.

I deplore XML. There are certainly times when you want a human-readable and -editable data format that's not tied to any particular programming language or application, but something like JSON is a lot more succinct. And I've seen plenty of occasions where people used XML for small amounts of information that was tied to a particular programming language or application, where a short piece of program code or a simple text file would have been a lighterweight choice. And though I've been forced to use XML on occasion, I've done my best to block the experience from my mind.

So what's the protocol for unwanted LinkedIn endorsements? Will my contacts be livid if I reject the endorsement? If I accept, does it go on my Permanent Record? And if so, will prospective employers refuse to consider me for any job except shoveling out the XML stables?