[Springtime]

I'm always surprised that archive.org's URL scheme is still used. To this day uploads will have URLs like `/details/hey` and IIRC the only thing to distinguish them from other submissions with matching names is the auto appending of a digit. It feels like `New Folder (1)` for URLs.

Edit: I misremembered. They append the date to the URL to avoid name conflicts, like `/details/hey_20260122`.

I think Youtube got it right early. Make it short enough but random, so users won't be tempted to manually type it out and make mistakes but if they really do need to manually type it the length is reasonable. It also made sharing via SMS/Twitter limits more feasible.

[extraduder_ire]

I can't say that they don't for sure, but if I was designing the videoID youtube uses for URLs, I'd put a check character in there. For the rare case where it must be entered manually.

Would be nice to know if you'd made a typo rather than just hitting a blank ID in the vast space of all possible video IDs.