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Bug 2347 - Allow the W3C Link validator to check links to the CSS validator
Summary: Allow the W3C Link validator to check links to the CSS validator
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: CSSValidator
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Other (show other bugs)
Version: CSS Validator
Hardware: PC All
: P2 normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Olivier Thereaux
QA Contact: qa-dev tracking
URL: http://jigsaw.w3.org/robots.txt
Whiteboard:
Keywords: Usability
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2005-10-17 13:34 UTC by Otto Stolz
Modified: 2007-07-19 09:24 UTC (History)
1 user (show)

See Also:


Attachments

Description Otto Stolz 2005-10-17 13:34:22 UTC
The W3C link validator balks on any link to
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/; quote:
  http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?uri=...&profile=css2
    What to do: The link was not checked due to robots exclusion rules.
    Check the link manually.
    Response status code: (N/A)
    Response message: Forbidden by robots.txt
    Line: 419

Note that the CSS Validator even recommends to include, in the
pages to be checked, a link to itself; yet, the link checker from
the same organisation does not check those recommendend links.

Please include in http://jigsaw.w3.org/robots.txt the following code:
  User-Agent: W3C-checklink
  Disallow:
or, if you want to be more restrictive:
  User-Agent: W3C-checklink
  Disallow: /guest-demos/
  Disallow: /status/
  Disallow: /demos/
  Disallow: /HyperNews/
  Disallow: /cgi-bin/
  Disallow: /Friends/
  Disallow: /api/
  Disallow: /Benoit/Public/DVDDB/
  # Don't exclude validator and docs
Comment 1 Otto Stolz 2006-07-07 09:56:43 UTC
After more than 8 months, this simple, yet important, entry
in http://validator.w3.org/robots.txt is still missing!

(Though, meanwhile, the error message points to
<http://validator.w3.org/docs/checklink.html#bot>,
where w3.org has documented what you shhould have done,
before.)
Comment 2 Otto Stolz 2006-07-18 16:41:05 UTC
Sorry, typo. Of course, I had meant to write:

After more than 8 months, this simple, yet important, entry
in http://jigsaw.w3.org/robots.txt is still missing!
Comment 3 Olivier Thereaux 2007-07-19 09:24:14 UTC
While indeed we give people the choice and tools to give access to checklink, does not mean we want all our services, especially the very heavily-loaded ones like the CSS validator, crawled, by this robot or others.

The W3C link checker will keep mentioning that the link hasn't been checked, but that is not an error.