Reminds me a bit of the good ol' pre-Vista days of "My Documents" et cetera in the Windows world. :) But hey, even MS took a decade between 95 and Vista to decide to drop the prefix!

This is a really dismissive comment that could be used to trivialize just about any article and debate here on HN. While it isn't a big issue, this topic is something designer's do think about and a discussion about its effects on user experience seems reasonable. Plus I doubt anyone's losing hours of productivity over this.

That's the kind of dismissive attitude that kills web companies. If there's one thing we've learned from usability research, A/B testing and the like, it's that seemingly subtle changes in details can make a huge difference to overall effectiveness. And if there's a second thing we've learned, it's that what programmers or web developers assume is best is a lousy indicator of what is best when you actually measure results.

Presenting material in a way that resonates with the target audience of each particular product or service is important, and a little time spent getting it right will almost certainly generate more benefit than writing code for the same amount of time.

Where this simplicity breaks down is when you have two kinds of a thing. For example, a user may have documents shared by a group and then documents that are yours/mine.

Honestly, I still feel it's an overwrought discussion about something that ultimately doesn't effect the user enough to change their general perception of the product.

That works fine for links and buttons, but what about microcopy?

Sometimes you have to differentiate (e.g., between all the bookmarks and the user's bookmarks in a navbar).