Oh, I think there is a will. The (loose) consensus seems to be that notifications would be a good thing, but that they'd be opt-out or (more likely) an altered version of the name tag such as <user name="nacbrie" notify=yes> (possibly opt-out as well), or if usernames are shortened then something like @nacbrie vs. @nacbrie*.

RE the 'silly' comment: well, to elaborate further, Dreamwidth operates according to its own protocols and terms of service, based upon what denise and mark think serve the site, its users, and their wishes best. And those terms of service and protocols, and indeed the culture of Dreamwidth, place an emphasis on users being able to control their levels of privacy which includes the visibility of 'public' content. The logic that "I can do this via an external site, so there is no problem being able to do it via Dreamwidth" ignores that fact. And, indeed, the point that "well, external search engines can ignore robots.txt files, so an equivalent behaviour by Dreamwidth is no different" is ludicrous, given that Dreamwidth explicitly provide ways for users put in robots.txt files in the first place.

Your point that "I can already do this with an external search engine, so it won't be much of a shock if Dreamwidth does it" fails to stand. As explained above, the notifications feature is a very different beast to searching for one's name on the site. The former is a passive method of receiving notification, whereas at the moment one has to go actively looking for instances of one's name. The burden is shifted from the user who is mentioned to the poster. Only a very small number of users actually go looking for their names.