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divbzero

This was written by Tim Berners-Lee and should have “(1998)” appended to the title.

Cool URIs Don't Change (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29442818 - Dec 2021 (72 comments)

Cool URIs don't change (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27537840 - June 2021 (140 comments)

Cool URIs Don't Change (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23865484 - July 2020 (156 comments)

Cool URIs don't change (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11712449 - May 2016 (122 comments)

Cool URIs don't change. - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4154927 - June 2012 (84 comments)

Tim Berners-Lee: Cool URIs don't change (1998) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2492566 - April 2011 (26 comments)

Cool URIs Don't change - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=175199 - April 2008 (9 comments)

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Yup. This has been posted so much over the years, I'm not sure there's anything left to comment that hasn't already been commented... :P

There's always new things to discuss, even if they're the same things. Because the people doing the discussing are new. For example, I've never seen those old discussions and I never in a million years would have searched for and found them.

I've found the key, when you're on a forum and see something discussed more than once, is to change your thinking. Instead of getting annoyed, think great, a new cohort of people will get to talk about this important topic.

This kind of reframing works in many different areas of my life and the older I get, the more I have to apply it to avoid becoming a grumpy old curmudgeon.

(Links to the old discussions are great though, they just don't need to be followed up by complaining every time.)

So much this. Many (most?) oldstyle forums suffered from a pretty strict no-duplicate rule even in “free talk” sections. This led to few oldtime gatekeepers dominating these places, new post anxiety and general stagnation, because new users had no way to learn occasionally or talk about things. When I started to visit HN, it was so relieving to see that well-separated duplicates don’t get moderated away or even discouraged. It simply means that you can eventually learn what you don’t know yet or missed for some reason, can participate/discuss it from a today’s point of view and renew your understanding.

Repetition may be seen as a visitor’s expense, but appreciating it creates a huge net profit over time, cause it helps a community to stay fit and alive.

All the tut-tutting makes searching harder for other users too! You end up with relevant and active looking threads that are actually just regulars dunking on the poster for not searching.

My personal favorite is doing a Google search and landing on an ancient forum where the discussion is some variation of "look at the stickies" or "use the search feature", but the stickies are 404s and the search returns only the aforementioned thread.

> Instead of getting annoyed, think great, a new cohort of people will get to talk about this important topic.

https://xkcd.com/1053/ :)

Nah, it's like that old saying:

> No man ever visits the same URI twice, for even if it is a cool URI which does not change, he is not the same man.

> I'm not sure there's anything left to comment that hasn't already been commented

I would have agreed with you a year ago. But now, with AI, the entire web model may become less of a thing.

I thought the web would endure forever, despite the attacks from platforms and browser monopolizers.

Now it looks like social will soon be overrun by robots (maybe creepy ID verification will save it?), and the need to publish information will diminish as you can generate it and probably share the results on some future AI platform.

Maybe it's the opposite. "Social" spaces will become so flooded with worthless AI posts trying to grab people's attention for advertising purposes that real websites created by real people will flourish once again. That's what I want to believe.

> some future AI platform

What does that even mean? Because it could credibly mean like 20 different things, some of which would clearly be nonsense, but you haven’t left us with a specific enough of an idea to engage with either way.

A closed system where you create and consume an endless array of AI-generated content without leaving.

> you can generate it

AI applications function with the web model. The web will to some extent endure forever, I doubt it'd ever go fully extinct. We may use AI tools more, but not for everything.

Cool comments don't change

Now it's more like, "Cool Web Apps actually have internal URIs".

Almost ironic the linked page is not www.w3.org/1998/Provider/Style/URI

The link is also https://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI instead of http://www.w3.org/Provider/Style/URI

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