Eh, I think your comment only confirms the main point of the article, that it&#x27;s become massively confusing.<p>I was around around then, and definitely recall the conventional wisdom being &quot;don&#x27;t call them URLs anymore, call them URIs, that&#x27;s the new standard.&quot;  At any rate, rfc3686 claimed to be a new standard for _syntax_ -- according to the passage you quote, whether it&#x27;s a &quot;URL&quot; or a non-URL URI is not a matter of syntax at all.  The syntax spec is now called &quot;URI&quot;. That rfc claims.<p>Except somehow the result has been just massive confusion over what standard should be used how for syntax of URLs&#x2F;URIs, with the WHATWG just stirring the pot further (obligatory reference to xkcd there&#x27;s too many standards let&#x27;s create another).  I don&#x27;t know that there&#x27;s anything wrong or to blame in the written text of rfc3986, but something in the social practice of rfc standards as manifested in URL&#x2F;URI-related things, has resulted in massive confusion and a situation described in OP where there is effectively no formal standard for URLs&#x2F;URIs consistently used across software.