August 9, 2026
Link rot? More like link riot
Cool URIs Don't Change (1998)
The internet’s oldest rule still hits hard as commenters roast broken links everywhere
TLDR: A 1998 web essay says the best internet addresses are the ones that never change, and commenters say that message has only gotten truer with time. The drama: some argue modern redirects help, while others gleefully pointed out that one famous example link in the essay is now dead.
Tim Berners-Lee’s 1998 essay basically drops one brutal rule for the web: good links should stay put. His argument is almost scolding in its simplicity — links do not magically “go bad,” people break them by redesigning sites, renaming folders, exposing behind-the-scenes setup in the address, or just turning old pages off. In other words, the real villain is not technology. It’s human chaos, bad planning, and a little bit of “we’ll fix it later” energy.
And the community? Oh, they were absolutely ready. One camp treated the piece like sacred scripture, calling it “a classic” and noting the delicious irony that the article itself has survived at the same address for nearly three decades. That detail alone had people nodding like, yes, the man brought receipts. Others widened the stakes, saying this is not just about “coolness” — it is about long-term memory, libraries, and whether the internet can stop acting like it has collective amnesia.
But then came the plot twist. Some commenters argued modern tools have softened the problem, thanks to automatic forwarding when page names change. Translation: websites can now slap a “we moved” note on an old link instead of leaving readers stranded. And then a killer punchline arrived: a commenter checked one of the government examples praised in the essay and found it now returns 404 — page not found. That discovery turned the thread into a dark comedy about how even essays warning about broken links can’t save everyone from becoming the joke.
Key Points
- •The article defines a cool URI as one that does not change and says URI breakage is usually caused by people, not technical necessity.
- •It argues that domain owners control their URI namespaces and can usually maintain stable links unless the organization can no longer operate the domain or server.
- •The article says common reasons for changing URIs—such as site redesigns, file moves, staff changes, or implementation changes—reflect poor planning rather than valid necessity.
- •It recommends separating URI design from file-system layout and server implementation, using server mapping to keep public addresses stable.
- •The article uses National Science Foundation URLs to contrast fragile CGI-based addresses with more durable publication-oriented paths and rejects the view that URNs excuse unstable ordinary web links.