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 and try and bring it up again. Feel free to throw in your $0.02 on the webmasters meta.