As a mod on webmasters, maybe I can shed some light. 

`.htaccess` and `mod_rewrite` rules are a real grey area, even on the webmasters site. Our definition of a webmaster is someone who takes care of the day to day running of a website, which does NOT include:

- Server configuration
- Apache/IIS installation
- Apache/IIS configuration

As these are generally taken care of by a sysadmin. Basically, if it's something your hosting provider takes care of for you, then it's not a webmaster problem.

But you raise an interesting point. I will [start a meta discussion over there][1] and try and bring it up again. Feel free to throw in your $0.02 on the webmasters meta.

## Update

So, after several days nobody has had anything to say on webmasters, so I'm going to make a bold step and state that it's OK for mod_rewrite questions to be migrated, based on the following template:

>Consider the following
> typical scenario: a paid hosting
> environment (either IIS or Apache,
> Windows or Linux, whatever).
> 
> * If it's something you CAN do without getting your host involved, then YES
> it belongs on webmaster.se
> * If it's something you CAN'T do and need to get your host involved, then
> NO it's not for pro webmasters and
> should be closed or migrated to SF



  [1]: https://webmasters.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/365/a-new-proposal-for-the-definition-of-webmaster-question