That seems incredibly arbitrary when a robots.txt is purely optional -
especially as the default spider behavior is to index all unless told
otherwise. So you're penalizing people by having your robot behave in the
opposite manner? And regarding PICS labels, most people don't know how to
set them or don't have the requisite server access. How do you justify
these?
John,
We don't necessarily penalize for not having one, we just credit for having
one (offering one is not part of our criteria [1]). It's something we like
to see. For the reasons I stated: we grade a site on many levels, and we see
that providing a robots.txt as a positive thing that helps make a
site/domain complete. Same with a PICS label, it's not a requirement, though
I believe a PICS label can actually help with access in that some schools
districts won't allow network access to site that doesn't claim to be
appropriate for the level of the students the system serves.
Regarding "requisite server access" I don't understand. The PICS label is
put into the head of the document. If a developer doesn't understand how to
get a PICS label or can't add one to the head and don't have access to such,
I doubt they'd be submitting a site for possible awarding.
But, regardless, the main point of my reply was to clarify that the
robots.txt file has no bearing on the site's accessibility (that I'm aware
of) and that's it's just one of the many things we look for in a quality
submission.
Cheers.
Mike
[1] http://accessites.org/site/criteria/
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