Re: Horror story

Murray Bent (murrayb@surf.com)
Sun, 14 Jan 96 11:07:40 -0800


Any ideas for a back-up plan in case the 'robots.txt' approach
does not gain more than 5% of the sites (admittedly representing
more than 5% of the cool content).

There are lots of other web middleware facilities in the works,
and a "deny permission" element or quality of service element is
in some them. If we want smarter robots we need the middleware too.

- there are docs on the w3.org site for all manner of proposals,
watch out .. some of them may happen!

- without these middleware facilities, the number of dumb robots and
site slurpers will *proliferate* . Is robots.txt the solution of
choice to the 'personalised' robots that will come in the box with
Windows 96 say?

mj