skreft: I can see nothing wrong by having a website that lists PEP 8 violations in the standard library - feel free to create one on wiki.python.org.

Your preferred solution of having automated tests is not feasible. Taking punycode.py (sic) as an example (of which I'm the author): I disagree with some of the warnings that the tool produces (and hence I probably disagree with parts of PEP 8 also). The warnings I agree with (about missing space characters), I also agree with Benjamin and Raymond: we shouldn't fix these in the code, since that would clutter the version history of the file (suggesting that it was modified when there wasn't any substantial change). The same reasoning probably applies to many other "violations".

When you said that punycode.py violates PEP 8, I was concerned. Then seeing the actual complaints of the tool make me laugh, since they are *really* micrological, when I was expecting substantial problems.