balam - 7:16 am on Jan 29, 2005 (gmt 0)

> The semantics of 404 imply no other meaning [...]

> My intent here is not to be picky [...]

Yes, you are correct, and I don't consider it to be picky to point out the differences between a 404 and 410 response. (Coincidentally, I just re-read what RFC2616 had to say about those earlier today as I scrolled my way down to read up on 502 Bad Gateway - darn corporate proxy servers!)

I think I'm guilty of expecting bots to understand that when I serve a 404 that means the resource is gone, due to the poor implementation (on the SEs' side) of the 410 response. IIRC, only Google deals with it properly, but I shouldn't be quoted on that!