> For an example, look at the top of this page. The only semantic meaning in the URL for this post is `news.ycombinator.com`. The rest, `item?id=24156986`, is m

> For an example, look at the top of this page. The only semantic meaning in the URL for this post is `news.ycombinator.com`. The rest, `item?id=24156986`, is meaningless to a human. I agree, but I'm going to say the unpopular thing: HN has problems and is an archaic design from the past, and this issue is due to the proliferation of changing the titles of posts (thereby breaking a vanity URL) or changing the URL that the story points at to some other website. Using a vanity URL doesn't work for how the owners run this website and its my belief that it's in the minority along with forum (phpBB e.g.) websites and does not represent the larger percentage of the internet using vanity URLs with human readable text strings in them.