Re: [syndication] Re: robots.txt and rss

[elijah wright <elw@stderr.org>]

> Asking the readers to engage in extra behavior to avoid making consumption
> mistakes?  How about asking the readers to just start being mindful of the data
> and optionals /already available/ in the standards?  It's a lot more likely a
> programmer is going to add other XML handling routines that it is to pull
> another text file and slog through it.

eh, but having more than one way to do the same kind of thing has never
hurt *anyone*.  :)

> If dealing with abusive consumption is the issue then tackle it at the
> server side.  Apache has fine tools to aid the process.

not everyone gets to use apache, even when they want to.  nor do they
necessarily have access to that much of its configuration, when they *do*
get to use it.  robots.txt can be handy because all of the work happens on
the client-side, rather than depending on the ability of the content
provider to gain access to their server's configs... (think of all of the
people with blogs running in "shared hosting" scenarios....)

elijah