Can some sort of rule/guideline/something be considered, stating that FPP's shouldn't have a bajillion links, one in each individual word?

I know it's not a serious thing, and a programmatic solution isn't the way to go, but when I see posts like this it drives me nuts. Am I the only one?
posted by pdb on Apr 29, 2006 - 57 comments

Some snarky character here informed the world that my post had been scrubbed because it was only a single link. It was replaced by a bigger, multi-link version of the same story. I accuse him of scrubbing it but he denied it. How, though, did he know it had been replaced? But what I really want to know is why there is this new insistance on multi-link FPPs? When I first came to Metafilter I found it useful to have items that interested me pointed out and made available. That was great. I then did my own further research. Multi-link posts generally appear to be posted as a means of either making an argument for a particular pov or to publicize some topic or subject, with a lot of authorities sited much like footnotes. This is not, to my mind what this site used to be about.

As it happens if the intro interests me I want to go to the most relevant link, not plow through the poster's own research. But further, I am not a programmer or enough of a geek to even know how to do the html for all the secondary links, let along italics. My e-mail software makes URLs clickable and it seems that it ought to be simple enough to make URLs clickable in the windows for both comments and original posts. You- and I guess I am writing to Matt here - did try to do italics for a while, but they didn't work for my Mac and they have now disappeared. But really, has this become a place for people to show off theirs html cleverness or to pass along what might be interesting or valuable information? It is called a filter isn't it? What has that come to mean?
posted by donfactor on Nov 22, 2005 - 26 comments

"The post is what you bring to it."

What's the consensus? I find these 'random word links' very annoying. Can we at least have some etiquette rule that says if you have more then a hand full of links, the text of the link must reflect the content of the linked-to page? Or something?
posted by delmoi on Apr 4, 2005 - 53 comments

Spock...get your own damn.......blog
posted by briank on Mar 12, 2005 - 40 comments

This comment lends credence to my prior concern. I love well researched posts containing multiple links. However, in my view every link in a post should link to notable sites; not one link with needless, lazy padding. I'm concerned if members, new and old alike, think "padding out" a post with a 3-minute googling exercise is a good thing.
posted by nthdegx on Mar 2, 2005 - 35 comments

The famous "bohemian rhapsody" post is utterly impossible to find with the normal search methods, due to the way the words are divided up into more than one hyperlink. If I didn't know it was y2karl's post I wouldn't have been able to find it at all. Also, search doesn't seem to let you search the text within the title tags, either.
posted by Space Coyote on May 17, 2003 - 21 comments

My first post here on Metalk so please excuse me if this is (has been) covered elsewhere. While I understand how to make a "basic" post, how can I add other links in the post (within the description text). I have no idea. Any help?
posted by sharksandwich on Feb 9, 2002 - 4 comments

Lots of links in a front page post? [more]
posted by gleemax on Nov 17, 2001 - 13 comments