I mean, are they bad instructions? They work for most people, and they're what most people are familliar with. If I ask a random *ix user what's wrong with my shell command, they're more likely to know about dd.
They're good instructions, Brent. 13/10 would follow again.
In light of this article anything seems possible, so put a pleaserobots.txt in / google bot will modify all the wikis for you.