[adventured]

I find it interesting the author mentions making an effort to remove the numeric ID from the URL.

I love using numeric IDs in the URL, for one specific reason: perma-short-link.

http://qz.com/365810/whats-missing-from-this-13-year-old-gir...

Becomes:

http://qz.com/365810

Which then redirects to the proper full url. Total effort: almost nil.

[userbinator]

Not only numeric but alphanumeric IDs; they also work as a nice shorthand in communication. I've seen plenty of people referring to e.g. "video jI3i9Lq4BcX on YouTube" on sites which would otherwise censor actual URLs.