And then, of course, there is our own DaniWeb directory, which fetches meta tags from the sites submitted to it and uses them to enhance search results. See! Meta tags aren't dead after all!

Though most largest search engines do not 'spider' the keyword Meta Tags on your page...

Don't forget, a lot of the larger search engines also use the meta tags to help determine duplicate content within your site. If you use the same ones across a couple of pages, then those pages will most likely never see the light of day.

Not true. Lots of websites have the same meta tag on every page and rank very well and have tens of thousands of pages indexed.

There will always be exceptions to general search engine behaviour.

The only important question to consider with this issue, as far as I'm concerned is whether the overly repeated meta tag web site stands the test of time. According to the search engine behaviour that I have been seeing, it should get eliminated fairly quickly as a significant contender in any meaningful keyphrase competition. Perhaps it would survive an obscure keyphrase arena.

I wouldn't be so quick to call them exceptions. Because Meta Tags have so little value in SEO anymore thanks to abuse, few webmasters go so far as to create unique Meta Tags for their pages. The majority of sites that use Meta Tags create one set that is used for every page in their website as they don't want to spend a lot of time on them and rightly so. There are just too many sites like this that are successful and have been successful for a long time to dismiss them.

It is also widely accepted that Meta Tags will never hurt your rankings in the SERPs. The sites that have the same Meta Tags on every page and the sites that have Meta Tags a mile long (a.k.a.a stuffed) prove this every day. Meta Tags and their influence on SEO have had their day come and go.

We may have to agree to disagree on this one.

I agree with Canada Fred, I think they are exceptions and will not stand the test of time. Especially after the BigDaddy update on Google. Many web pages went supplemental because their meta tags were the same (this is not to say that only pages that did this went supplmental, many pages went supplemental for other reasons).

However, the meta description has some value, and that unique and appropriate meta tags become a factor when combined with other elements (unique titles, etc).