The only problem with the tinyurl way is that the links expire. Which is fine on a board that purges its archives from time to time. The Alley doesn't, so quite often you'll come across a tinyurl link that's expired, even though the original isn't.
On that note, it looks a little like the new board software deals with long urls and punctuation better? Unless I totally missed the point of the lesson? (distinct possibility
)