I have observed several posts that say click here or here or here, which I find quite annoying since it requires the reader to click or hover over the link to find out what the author was referring to.
Do we have guidelines on this in any of the Stack Exchange sites?
I don't know of an existing guideline, but as a general good practice for writing web pages, I've heard that the text of a link should be an indicator of what the link is pointing to. In other words, if you just take the displayed link text out of context and ignore the rest of the content on the page, it should tell you what you'd see if you click on the link. Example:
Take a look at the Wikipedia page on hyperlinks for more information
I guess one way to do this would be to do your writing at first without any hyperlinks, and then go back and add in the links in appropriate places without changing your wording.
I want to add this suggestion to linking guidelines: When linking to another question on TeX SE, the link text should have the question title in it. Compare:
See this question for more information
with:
See "I've just been told I have to write a minimal example, what is that?" for more information.
The second indicates where the link is going and gives important information about why it's relevant.
This is boilerplate so there's no reason it can't be detailed. For more general use, copy both. (There exist Firefox addons such as Copy with URL and Debate Copy which add a feature when you select linked text to copy both the text and the URL. It's in the contextual menu that appears after selection. So when linking to a question page, select the document title (which contains a link to the page itself), select "Copy with URL", paste into your answer, and reformat.)
(For Mac users, TextExpander + AppleScript + Curl can do this for you automatically with any URL, but let's not go there.)
Edited I now noticed that in answers SE URL's get their question titles inserted as the link text automatically. So to achieve the above output, it's easiest to type
See "<https://tex.meta.stackexchange.com/q/228>" for more information.
The <> is needed because of the quotes. Note that the quotes won't be part of the link with this method. Moreover, this doesn't work in comments.
:-)) case, and explain the feature of SE (doesn't work in comments so far, AFAIK). Moreover, you might want to be clearer which of the four (three) alternatives is best in your opinion.
Commented
Feb 23, 2011 at 13:58
I've actually edited a few questions/answers that just pasted url's with no indication of what were they pointing to. Do people think this a kind of acceptable edit?
I actually find this kind of linking better, because it doesn't disturb the normal read flow, especially if the URL happens to be long and hairy. I wouldn't need to click on a link most of the time, especially when only browsing through questions and not looking for something in particular. If I want an answer, I'm going to click anyway, and the browser does good job letting me know where I will land.
AFAIR, there was a blog post or a discussion over at meta.SO or blog.SO, where this is recommended (I can't remember where exactly, if I manage to find the link, I will post it, ironically, in an edit later).
If, however, you are referring to putting the solution in your post instead of just linking to it, I am all for that, and this is also kind of a recommendation from SO (although I am myself guilty of doing the opposite).
