I just signed a petition calling for Norwegian universities to use research expertise on AI when deciding how to implement it, rather than having decisions be made mostly administratively. , If you are a researcher in Norway, please read it and sign it if you agree – and share with anyone else who might be interested. The petition was written by three researchers at UiT: Maria Danielsen (a philosopher who completed her PhD in 2025 on AI and ethics, including discussions of art and working life), Knut Ørke (Norwegian as a second language), and Holger Pötzsch (a professor of media studies with many years of research on digital media, video games, disruption, and working life, among other topics). This is not about preventing researchers from exploring AI methods in their research. It is about not uncritically accepting the hype that everyone must use AI everywhere without critical reflection. It is about not introducing Copilot as the default option in word processors, or training PhD candidates to believe they will fall behind if they do not use AI when writing articles, without proper academic discussion. Changes like these should be knowledge-based and discussed academically, not merely decided administratively, because they alter the epistemological foundations of research. Maria wrote to me a couple of months ago because she had read my opinion piece in Aftenposten in which I called for a strong brake on the use of language models in knowledge work. She was part of a committee tasked with developing UiT’s AI strategy and was concerned because there was so much hype and so few members of the committee with actual expertise in AI. I fully support the petition. There are probably some good uses for AI in research, but the uncritical, hype-driven insistence that we must simply adopt it everywhere is highly risky. There are many researchers in Norway with strong expertise in AI, language, ethics, working life, and culture. We must make use of this expertise. This is also partly about respect for research in the humanities, social sciences, psychology, and law. Introducing AI at universities and university colleges is not merely a technical issue, and perhaps not even primarily a technical one. It concerns much more: philosophy of science, methodological reflection, epistemology, writing, publishing, the working environment, and more. […]
elzapp
I don’t really think its a web-standard, but a lot of people that are passionate for web-standards also pushes this view…
Check http://no-www.org/
Sindre Sandvik
I have not a clue as to where that might be, but
“[…]but I can‚Äôt find tit on their site. Can you help me?”
I’m not so sure that w3c’s webpage is the best/right place to look for that… ;p
(cheapshot I know, but it was too hard to resist)
H?•kon
Had it been a standard you would have found it in the Naming and Addressing section of their web site. I’ll be surprised if you find anything about it (and I’m not considering appendix F of rfc2396 as relevant).
It’ a myth, and the origin is probably a variety of bad explanations and gripes stating that the www prefix isn’t required. This may explain how “not required” becomes “shouldn’t use”.
i1277
Even though it’s technically redundant and it’s usually not a good idea to force technical and semantically meaningless stuff onto the user, I kinda like the wwww-prefix. As an “important” part of the URL-aesthetics, and www (or “vvv” as we pronounce it in Norwegian) is a symbol of the web itself.
joshlee
My understanding was that there wasn’t really a standard, just convention.
I never liked “www;” it’s almost impossible to say it out loud without sounding silly. “web” had a tiny bit of momentum as an alternate prefix, until people realized that the whole prefix thing was simply unnecessary.
Scott
Out loud, I’ve always gone with “triple-dub”; way easier to say than “dubbayoudubbayoudubbayou.”
nick
Don’t look to us Americans for help. We can’t even get rid of one “W.”
Jill
ROFL! Good one, Nick 🙂
Pity about the www. thing though. I had this idea it was writ in law. Perhaps I dreamt it. Leaves me with a little less clout when complaining to the University about their student.uib.no domain requiring http://www.student.uib.no...
i1277
Yeah, student.uib.no already has a subdomain, so www doesn’t seem right there. Of course there’s always rasmus.uib.no instead.
And thanks to Scott, it really was about time I realised why they call George W. “Dubya”.
Jesper
I must point to the important http://fuckwww.dk/ site.
vika
Can’t help you either, in practical terms; but it always amuses me to hear Italians pronounce www: “vuvuvu.”
H?•kon
Ah, years ago I found it quite entertaining to be at conferences and listen to people from different countries spell out their local variety of “www”. It’s one way to learn that www is a name, and if your server already has a name it doesn’t need another.
It stopped being funny about 4 years ago (but I think my favourite “www” would be in Cymraeg…)
media girl
There are little quirky exceptioins. Those True Fresco referrer scripts? They will give you one list of people going to your http://www... site, but if you reload your page without the www they will give you a completely different (and smaller) list. Go figure. I tend to use it online and leave it off in print. I tried saying trip-dub for a while, but nobody knew what the heck I was talking about. So now, talking, I leave it off, too. (But use the www in voiceovers.) I’m usually very consistent with these usages.