Please do not read any of this with an "absolute" tone. These are merely my thoughts on a problem based in my current understanding and some experience. To be honest, I would not be surprised if this is already being done by individuals more experienced than I at building REST APIs, but I think it is worth discussing as I have yet to find anything like this blogged about. I present this with utmost humility in order to foster discussion; not to create devolving argument.
I believe that usage of media types in examples on the web demonstrating "how to build" RESTful APIs is too narrowly focused. In my experience, much of the discussion around them seems to be solely focused on their usage either in content-negotiation or applying versioning to an API.
*As an aside, versioning can be "controversial" itself as an "anti-pattern" of REST. I heard it argued that HATEOAS should be the answer to the problem that versioning works to solve. This is an aside and not the focus of this ponderanc