Re: [syndication] site-wide metadata [was: RFC: myPublicFeeds.opml]

[Ian Graham <ian.graham@utoronto.ca>]

On Wed, 15 Oct 2003, Rick Bradley wrote:

> * Dave Winer (dave@userland.com) [031015 14:14]:
> > 2. The train left the station on this with robots.txt. The world survived.
> > Sorry, I noticed. I wasn't supposed to, I guess, but I did.
> 
> The robots.txt convention is not scalable, addresses a different
> population, and was a punt at a time when most of the future use cases
> we're now addressing were unimaginable.  It's like pointing to chariots
> as a best practice when proposing a way to increase fuel efficiency in a
> new car.

Perhaps more like trying to repair a broken fuel pump on a '94 Chevy,
when you really need to get a new car. 

On the other hand, the robots.txt mechanism was proposed in '94, and it
worked very well at the start, when on one really had a clue what the
other demands/requirments would be.

YOu can spend an awful lot of time trying to design to perfection, only to
get clobbered by the unexpected. Like X.400, for example.

Is it so bad to both fix the chevy _and_ look for a new car?  The former
might even give some ideas on hte real need for electric windows --

Ian