Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] Please disallow www-commits in robots.txt

[Ian Kelling]

Dora Scilipoti <dora@gnu.org> writes:

> Hi,
>
> the gnu/server/staging directory was created years ago because GNU
> webmasters expressed the wish to have a private space where they could
> play around, test and see how different styles would look in the
> website. Things like where to put the nav bar, which colors to use,
> where to use h3s or h4s, and the like. You can call it a sandbox or,
> perhaps better, a playground.
>
> Sometimes we also use it for text drafts. I, for example, often use it
> for unfinished articles intended to be published under /education. Yes,
> these things we can discuss in private mailing lists --and we do. But
> after discussion, we generally upload it first to /staging for a final
> clean-up, because seeing it on the screen exactly the way it would
> look in the main website often reveals mistakes that were overseen
> during discussion.
>
> The staging directory is also a good place for new webmasters to try
> their hand at building webpages.
>
> In sum, this private playground is something webmasters want and need,
> and search engines should have no business indexing it. Is it possible?

That sounds reasonable to me. I would assume that if webmasters don't
have access to change robots.txt, it would just be the fsf tech team.