Someone above posted the interview with Tim Berners-Lee, I take it that's citation enough ?
The relevant quote:
"Looking back on 15 years or so of development of the Web is there anything you would do differently given the chance?
I would have skipped on the double slash - there’s no need for it. Also I would have put the domain name in the reverse order - in order of size so, for example, the BCS address would read: http:/uk.org.bcs/members. The last two terms of this example could both be servers if necessary."
He didn't invent domain names. He invented the web. So, no, it's not citation enough.
Also, given that domain names were already in the current order, if he'd put it in reverse order for the web, it'd be far worse than what we have now, which at least is consistent across different types of services.
EDIT: I guess you could argue it's citation enough if we assume, based on his examples, that the original question refers only to web usage.
I figured Tim Berners-Lee is in an excellent position to criticize not only his own work, but also the more general case of the domain name system.
Obviously if he had done it the other way around in URLs then that would have been a fairly strong point of critique against the DNS, the fact that he would have in retrospect been better of to choose the alternative in spite of creating two different systems makes that critique even stronger.
Not that it matters, but quoting one person about what they would have done doesn't count as "widely considered". I don't believe any large proportion of people consider it at all, let alone in a consistent direction.
As phishing becomes more and more of a problem this is getting wider 'play', people that are security conscious have commented on this for years, and the hierarchical break between domain names and paths always was an eyesore.
I've seen this crop up in many places, I was looking for Tim Berners-Lee statement if I could find it because I figure he's the authority in the field.
The relevant quote:
"Looking back on 15 years or so of development of the Web is there anything you would do differently given the chance?
I would have skipped on the double slash - there’s no need for it. Also I would have put the domain name in the reverse order - in order of size so, for example, the BCS address would read: http:/uk.org.bcs/members. The last two terms of this example could both be servers if necessary."