[erikgahner]

I agree with a lot of these ideas but I do not get the obsession with short urls. E.g., why not make it easy for readers to see the date of when something was published?

In this case I cannot even see a publication date on the post itself (looking at the archive it says it is from December 26, 2012). I would personally prefer a URL like /2012/minimal-web/ rather than /w/.

[OtomotO]

Depends on the post`s content whether the date is relevant at all.

Also, what if it's a technical post that was published a decade ago but updated last week?

Many people would probably dismiss the info just by looking at the date.

I would never add the date, but I agree with the shorturls.

A good URL should not be too long but also not too short. (Although intermediate paths can be short, e.g. /u/123 instead of /users/123 is fine)

[erikgahner]

Good point! There is a difference between blog posts and pages to take into account here. For blog posts, I would like to see at least the publication year in the URL, as well as the exact date in the post itself.

For pages, I am fine with leaving out the date in the URL, but I would still like to see a publication date + last update date (if not a URL to a changelog).

My issue is that it can often be difficult to evaluate whether a date 'is relevant at all' at the time of publication. For that reason, I prefer bloggers to be transparent about when something was published (and/or revised).

[ezequiel-garzon]

I feel the dates of publication and last update should be readily available, that is in the content and at the beginning. Of course this goes against minimalism, and plenty of maximalist websites omit this information as well.