Ask HN: Is "the web" an anachronism?

[niels_olson]

I edit medical research papers. On occasion, an author will cite a URL, e.g.,

> the investigators used the calculator for pancreatic fistula and DGE using the ISGPS definition on the Web (http://pancreasclub.com/calculator/)

I routinely change this to "on the Internet". While these authors are invariably citing port 80, certainly few sites with "www" actually participate in WWW consortium activities. What does the CS community do?

[sp332]

The Internet is a communications network. It carries email, IRC, ssh, and HTTP etc. The WWW is a hyperlink network. It consists of linked documents. They're not really the same thing (although everyone knows what you mean if you use them interchangeably informally).

[prodigal_erik]

It's a good shibboleth to distinguish posers from people who actually know how the web works. I wouldn't lose respect for a clinical researcher merely for not knowing better than the general public, provided they aren't working on electronic medical record-keeping. But as an author I'd be offended if an editor tried to make me look kind of clueless when I'm actually not.

[niels_olson → prodigal_erik]

Thanks, I actually edit translations from Japanese, so massaging word choice is very much in my lane for these jobs. I'm trying to make the authors look as competent as possible.