Yeah, I'd rather call them "links." That's what the rest of the world calls them. Well, maybe some still call them "hyperlinks."

(Bill D: Don't you suppose a lot of people come here already knowing what a link is, but not knowing what a "clicky" or "blicky" is?)

To create a link with the new tool, you have to copy-and-paste twice, plus you have to wait twice for a new screen to come up. No way is that approximately the same as doing a copy-and-paste once. (OK, twice, if you count the time I do it plus the time you do it.)

I copy-and-paste URLs only to document my source, after I've copied-and-pasted all the information I think anyone is likely to need into the thread. It's kind of like adding a footnote to a printed article: it's there so you can check my accuracy if you want. If I've done my job right, most people won't bother.

I do create a link in other circumstances: if the linked-to page is especially good, if I want a lot of people to see it, or if it has a lot of useful information that I don't want to copy into the message for some reason.

I think that's a good policy.

While we're on the subject of links, I wish people, when linking to another Mudcat thread, would use RELATIVE links rather than ABSOLUTE links. In other words, like this:

<a href=/thread.cfm?threadid=39208>PermaThread™: List of all joke threads</a>

instead of like this:

<a href=http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=39208>PermaThread™: List of all joke threads</a>

(Quotation marks are unnecessary.)

With a relative link, if you start out in a mirror site (ragtime, loki) you stay there; an absolute link like the one above switches you over to "www".

Also, I like it when people insert the name of the thread (or song, or website) into the link instead of the words "click here" or other non-informative stuff. I'd rather know where I'm going before I go there.