Weed cloth always fails

http://chanceofrain.com/2017/03/weed-cloth-always-fails/

Check out Emily's article, linked above.  

I have to admit that I used a permeable cloth between a sand + gravel + paver walkway and the underlying soil. I don't remember where I got the idea to do so, but in that situation the idea was to keep the lower sand bed of the walkway from intermixing with soil.  The hope was that it would extend the life of the pathway.  There was little area to grow weeds and I don't know well it worked, since I moved from that house. However, I never had the expectation that it would be weed-free.

Emily responded in another forum and stated that she might be the source of that erroneous advice.  Currently, and based on studying paths over their life, she didn't recommend weed cloth for that use. 

I've pulled up enough failed weed cloth used in other more "standard" applications that I would never use it with its original intent in mind.   I can also imagine that any path repair involving a prior application of weed cloth would be many times worse than if weed cloth had not been used in the first place, so I'll let the expert lead here and agree that I [now] can't see any use for weed cloth.

My photos of failed weed cloth look strikingly similar to Emily's - rather crappy for a "garden".