The country’s new robots.txt file
Here’s a small and nerdy measure of the huge change in the executive branch of the US government today. Here’s the robots.txt file from whitehouse.gov yesterday:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /query.html
Disallow: /omb/search
Disallow: /omb/query.html
Disallow: /expectmore/search
Disallow: /expectmore/query.html
Disallow: /results/search
Disallow: /results/query.html
Disallow: /earmarks/search
Disallow: /earmarks/query.html
Disallow: /help
Disallow: /360pics/text
Disallow: /911/911day/text
Disallow: /911/heroes/textAnd it goes on like that for almost 2400 lines! Here’s the new Obamafied robots.txt file:
User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/That’s it! BTW, the robots.txt file tells search engines what to include and not include in their indexes.
Is this just accidental or temporary, or a real and sustainable effort at improving access to government information? We shall see.
I think it’s change we can believe in; here’s more on FOIA:
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/day_one_new_foia_rules.php
And perspective on just how bad Bush/Cheney were on the issue:
http://www.cjr.org/feature/what_we_didnt_know_has_hurt_us.php
And, finally, Micah Sifry on citizen initiatives to open gov’ts large and small:
http://www.cjr.org/transparency/a_see-through_society.php
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