Probably like most users, I visit a handful of specific forums on Flyertalk. Until recently, the URLs for those forums identified them by number. (The URLs ended in "?f=###" where ### is the forum's 3-digit number. The SWA forum was 501, for example.) To jump from one forum to another, all I had to do was highlight the number at the end of the URL of a forum's thread list, type the number of my destination forum and hit <return>. Now the URLs on the thread list page include a shortened name of each forum and navigation by number is no longer possible.

I'm guessing this change was made for the benefit of search engines. I just want to make it known that it also affects at least one user.