The problem is two-fold:
- As I understood from some standards session at WWW5 this year, neither IETF
nor W3 want to specify more than the very basic protocols. Unless they have
changed their minds, a Robots Exclusion Standard would be at the bottom of
their lists.
- As soon as you try to create a formal standard, you will get even more
creative ideas what has to be changed first before the standard can be
adopted (that's why standards bodies take so long).
Even if the RES becomes a formal standard, there is no enforcement of any kind,
and robot writers would still have an option of ignoring it (after all, what's
a robot, is Mosaic's AutoSurf feature a robot already?)
Spreading the word is a good idea, perhaps announcing a FYI RFC might also
contribute to making robots writers aware of the standard, but IMHO calling
for a standards organization to adopt RES wouldn't help much.
Klaus Johannes Rusch
-- e8726057@student.tuwien.ac.at, KlausRusch@atmedia.net http://www.atmedia.net/KlausRusch/