[arscan]

URLs are a part of the UX of websites. The domain often represents the first interaction between the user and the site. Domains that follow a strict hierarchical structure that aligns to some real-world hierarchy may not be the best first interaction with the user, or at least not in the opinion of those that are creating the site.

So, I think it’s natural for site owners to want this freedom. Then it comes down to whether there should be constraints forced on them or not by policy for some greater good. In the US, generally, central planning on this type of stuff isn’t really part of the culture.

[nothrabannosir]

Oh I thought you were going the exact opposite direction with that reasoning. A hierarchical url is good because it immediately establishes trust and provenance. Currently I never know whether I’m dealing with a for profit entity pretending to be governmental, or actual government.

But maybe that is part of the culture?

[arscan]

To technical people, sure. I don’t think the average person knows about provenance rules of subdomains though and how it’s useful… it’s more just a bunch of symbols they don’t care about.

And we understand the threats here… a very real problem is someone forgetting to renew one of these .org or .com domains (maybe the person that maintains it retired) and a malicious actor grabs it after expiration, stands up a scraped copy, and uses it to collect parking ticket payments or whatever.

I was actually thinking a bit more about the diversity of domain names under .gov, though I realize now that the parent comment I replied to was about .org and .coms. I think you get a bit of those provenance assurances if they are under .gov, as a practical matter it’s harder for malicious actors to own one of those than one under other tlds. And then instead of forcing a strict taxonomy that is mostly for the benefit of the infrastructure maintainers (very enterprise software), there is freedom to use a name that makes the most sense for the target user.

[cbozeman]

No, people need to learn how the Internet is organized and named. It's the same as learning the Dewey Decimal system so you can navigate your local library.

It should be taught in school exactly the same way. It's more important in the year 2025 to know that, than it is the Dewey Decimal system, which is still taught in a majority of schools for some reason.

People should know what it means to be connected to a .gov, .com, .org, .edu, .net, .mil site, etc. I know we have a lot of new TLDs, but knowing the originals should be a bare minimum. This isn't rocket science, hell, most of these domains are almost self-explanatory even as three letter codes.

[BobaFloutist]

Nobody knows the Dewey Decimal system, they know subject/author/title hierarchy at best, and even then given the ambiguity in subjects they often resort to the computers or librarians to search the catalogue and get directions.