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Recently I've seen several Suggested Edits that basically take some URL provided in a post and hide it. For example:

Go to https://politics.meta.stackexchange.com/

Might be replaced with

Go here.

Is there a site standard that people should be following? As is, it seems like something that should usually be controlled by author intent. For example, someone might be showing the link to indicate where the link is going or that it goes to a PDF. Or someone may be citing a source, where identification of the source is at least as important as linking to it. Or simply may want to draw attention to the presence of the link. Inline links aren't always obviously links.

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    Hiding (or not) URLs behind semantically meaningful text is a style/UX choice, and as such this question is far better asked on either UX SE or possibly ELU SE if they would agree to its being ontopic. However, in my experience, it's been the convention to do such URL hiding in hypertext since forever, for a variety of reasons.
    – user4012
    May 9, 2016 at 16:07
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    The question is if it should be the standard HERE. I really don't care if it is better UX or not. The question is if it is a standard that we have established. If it is, OK, I'll go that way. If not, then I'll stick with author intent. As it is, there's no guidance as to the standard set here.
    – Brythan
    May 9, 2016 at 17:25
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    click here
    – Sam I am says Reinstate Monica
    May 11, 2016 at 15:11

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Better than either of the options you presented is this:

Go to the Politics Meta site.

Or, for even more context, you could write the sentence without "go to":

You can ask questions about the Politics site itself on the Politics Meta site.

It's a stylistic choice, but I personally like the posts I write to be readable out loud, which means I avoid showing URLs. At the same time, using "click here" as a link is ugly and doesn't give you a hint of what will come. Sometimes that's intended (you might want the destination to be somewhat of a surprise), but normally you want the reader to be able to figure out ahead of time what will happen if he clicks.

If I was presented with a suggested edit like the one you describe in your question, I would reject it.

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The answer will be contextual. Is it obvious from the link name what is being clicked on, and are you specifically referencing in a way that makes a link described by its own URL appropriate? Or does the link require additional explanation for the clicking user to have an idea what they are going to get when they click the link?

If you were to type: "I have a Stack Exchange post which is about a hovercraft is full of eels, the URL is as follows:

https://www.stackexchange.com/questions/3315/what-to-do-about-a-hovercraft-full-of-eels"

Then (apart from having a broken link) you'd probably be doing ok, because from context it's clear where the link goes.

If, on the other hand, you'd written:

"My hovercraft has some eels in it:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/ZWZS2.jpg"

You'd be better off formatting the link as:

"My hovercraft has some eels in it."

Hope this helps :).

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